1st October 2023- If we work without any selfish motive in view, do we not gain anything? Yes, we do, we gain the highest. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also.
2nd October 2023- Without the attainment of the fullness of knowledge or divine love, the state of absolute reliance on the Lord does not come. One who is truly and sincerely reliant on the Lord goes beyond all idea of the duality of good and bad.
6th October 2023- The study of the mind was, above all, the science to which the sages of India and Greece had directed their attention. All religions are the outcome of the study of the inner human being. Here we find the attempt at finding the unity, and in the science of religion, as taking its stand upon general and massive proportions, we find the boldest and the most vigorous manifestation of this tendency at finding the unity.
7th October 2023- Love, truth, and unselfishness are not merely moral figures of speech , but they form our highest ideal, because in them lies such a manifestation of power. One who can work for five days, or even for five minutes, without any selfish motive whatever, without thinking of future, of heaven, of punishment, or anything of the kind, has in him or her the capacity to become a powerful moral giant. It is hard to do it, but in the heart of hearts we know its value, and the good it brings.
9th October 2023- In those, and only those systems which dared to transcend beyond the personality of a limited human consciousness, we find also an attempt to resolve all physical phenomena into unity. The result was the “Akasha” of the Hindus and the “Ether” of the Greeks. “Akasha” was, after the mind, the first material manifestation, said the Hindu sages, and out of this “Akasha” all this has been evolved.
11th October 2023- Just as the nails can be pared off many times and are still part of our bodies, not different, so is our gross body related to the subtle. It is not that we have a subtle as well as a gross body. We have only one body, the part which endures longer is the subtle body, and that which dissolves sooner is the gross. Just as I can cut my nails any number of times, I can shed this gross body millions of times, but the subtle body will remain.
12th October 2023- If life is only a short play, if the universe is only a “fortuitous combination of atoms,” then why should I do good to another? Why should there be mercy, justice, or fellow-feeling? The best thing for this world would be to make hay while the sun shines, each man for himself. If there is no hope, why should I love my brother, and not cut his throat? If there is nothing beyond, if there is no freedom, but only rigorous dead laws, I should only try to make myself happy here.
You will find people saying nowadays that they have utilitarian grounds as the basis of morality. What is this basis? Procuring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number, if that serves my purpose? How will utilitarians answer this question? How do you know what is right, or what is wrong? I am impelled by my desire for happiness, and I fulfill it, and it is in my nature; I know nothing beyond. I have these desires, and must fulfill them; why should you complain? Whence come all these truths about human life, about morality, about the immortal soul, about God, about love and sympathy, about being good, and above all, about being unselfish?
All ethics, all human action and all human thought, hang upon the one idea of unselfishness. The whole idea of human life can be put into that one word, unselfishness.
15th October 2023- We find, in studying history, one fact held in common by all the great teachers of religion the world ever had. They all claim to have got their truths from beyond, not through their reasoning power. … What does the science of Yoga teach? It teaches that they were right in claiming that all this knowledge came to them from beyond reasoning, but that it came from within themselves.
17th October 2023- Religion is realization, and you must make the sharpest distinction between talk and realization. What we perceive in our soul is realization. We have no idea of the Spirit, we have to think of it with the forms we have before us. We have to think of the blue skies, or the expansive fields, or the sea, or something huge. How else can we think of God? So what are we doing in reality? We are talking of omnipresence, and thinking of the sea. Is God the sea? A little more common sense is required. Nothing is so uncommon as common sense, the world is too full of talk.
18th October 2023- Names and forms are like spots in the object-glass of a telescope, yet it is the light of the sun that shows us the spots; we could not even see the illusion save for the background of reality which is Brahman. Swami Vivekananda is just the speck on the object-glass; I am Atman, real, unchangeable, and that reality alone enables me to see Swami Vivekananda. Atman is the essence of every hallucination; but the sun is never identified with the spots on the glass, it only shows them to us. Our actions, as they are evil or good, increase or decrease the “spots,” but they never affect the God within us. Perfectly cleanse the mind of spots and instantly we see that “I and my Father are one.”
20th October 2023- Every one of us has a gross body which dissolves very quickly, then a subtle body which remains through aeons, and then there is the Atman. The Atman, according to Vedanta, is eternal, just as God is eternal. Nature is also eternal, but changefully eternal. The material of nature- Prana and Akasha- is eternal, but it is changing into different forms eternally. But the Atman is not manufactured either of Akasha or Prana, it is immaterial and, therefore, will remain for ever.
21st October 2023- No one has the power to put a limit to God’s infinite glory.
23rd October 2023- The majority of us cannot see beyond a few years, just as some animals cannot see beyond a few steps. Just a little narrow circle-that is our world. We have not the patience to look beyond, and so we become immoral and wicked. This is our weakness, our powerlessness.
26th October 2023- Always keep the mind cheerful. Everyone will die once, but cowards suffer the pangs of death again and again, solely due to the fear in their own minds.
28th October 2023- Making the mind and lips at one, the ideas have to be practiced in life. This is what Sri Ramakrishna meant by “allowing no theft in the chamber of thought.” You have to be practical in all spheres of work. The whole country has been ruined by masses of theories. He who is the true child of Sri Ramakrishna will manifest the practical side of religious ideas and will set to work with one-pointed devotion without paying heed to the prattling of others.
30th October 2023- No amount of knowledge of the external world can solve the problem [of knowing the origin of the world]. “But,” says the scientist, “we are just beginning to know a little: wait a few thousand years and we shall get the solution.” “No,” says Vedanta, for it has proved beyond all doubt that the mind is limited, that it cannot go beyond certain limits- beyond time, space, and causation. As no man can jump out of his own self, so no man can go beyond the limits that have been put upon him by the laws of time and space. Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three.
31st October 2023- The yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconsciousness state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then the knowledge, which is beyond reasoning, comes to us.