1st May 2024- Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly; it is a continous friction otherwise. How else could parents do their duties to their children, husbands to their wives, and vice versa? Do we not meet with cases of friction everyday in our lives? Duty is sweet only through love, and love shines in freedom alone.
2nd May 2024- We must not be extremely attached to anything except God. See everything, do everything, but be not attached. As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more master of himself, he is a slave. If a woman is tremendously attached to a man, she becomes a slave to that man. There is no use in being a slave. There are higher things in this world than becoming a slave to a human being. Love and do good to everybody, but do not become a slave. Addresses on Bhakti Yoga: The preparation (New York, December 16, 1895). Complete Works, 4.6.
3rd May 2024- Always surrender yourself to Bhagavān Sri Krishna. Always remember that we are but puppets in his hands. Remain pure always. Please be careful not to become impure even in thought, as also in speech and action. Always try to do good to others as far as possible.
6th May 2024- … Whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish…
Many times I have been in the jaws of death, starving, footsore, and weary; for days and days I had had no food, and often could walk no farther; I would sink down under a tree, and life would seem ebbing away. I could not speak, I could scarcely think, but at last the mind reverted to the idea: “I have no fear nor death; I never hunger nor thirst. I am It! I am It! The whole of nature cannot crush me; it is my servant. Assert thy strength, thou Lord of lords and God of gods! Regain thy lost empire! Arise and walk and stop not!” And I would rise up, reinvigorated, and here am I, living, today. Thus, whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish. For, after all, it is but a dream. Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Maya. Fear not- it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies. Be not afraid. Think not how many times you fail. Never mind. Time is infinite. Go forward: assert yourself again and again, and light must come. You may pray to everyone that was ever born, but who will come to help you? And what of the way of death from which none knows escape? Help thyself out by thyself. None else can help thee, friend. For thou alone art thy greatest enemy, thou alone art thy greatest friend. Get hold of the Self, then. Stand up. Don’t be afraid. In the midst of all miseries and all weakness, let the Self come out, faint and imperceptible though it be at first. You will gain courage, and at last like a lion you will roar out, “I am It! I am It!” “I am neither a man, nor a woman, nor a god, nor a demon; no, nor any of the animals, plants, or trees. I am neither poor nor rich, neither learned nor ignorant. All these things are very little compared with what I am: for I am It! I am It! Behold the sun and the moon and the stars: I am the light that is shining in them! I am the beauty of the fire! I am the power in the universe! For, I am It! I am It!
We are lions in sheep’s clothing of habit, we are hypnotised into weakness by our surroundings.
7th May 2024- People in these days are apt to take up religion as a means to some social or political end. Beware of this. Religion is its own end. The religion which is only a means to worldly well-being is not religion, whatever else it may be; and it is sheer blasphemy to hold that we have no other end than the free and full enjoyment of all the pleasure of our senses.
8th May 2024- The mind acts through two agencies- one external, and the other internal. When I see things, my mind goes out, becomes externalized; but suppose I close my eyes and begin to think, the mind does not go out, it is internally active. But, in either case, there is activity of the organs. When I look at you, both the organs and the instruments are active. When I close my eyes and begin to think, the organs are active, but not the instruments. Without the activity of these organs, there will be no thought.
9th May 2024- Is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a hundred other petty things that must occur every day in human life? In all these little roughnesses that we meet with in life, the highest expression of freedom is to forbear.
10th May 2024- Niṣṭhā (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. Niṣṭhā is, in a manner, placing the plant in the tub, shielding the struggling soul in its path.
11th May 2024- The yogi teaches that the mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then the knowledge, which is beyond reasoning, comes to us.
13th May 2024- God is the goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want to be angry, be angry with Him, Chide your Beloved, chide your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a reaction. If you are angry with me I am sure quickly to react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say unto the Beloved, “Why do You not come to me; why do You leave me thus alone?” Where is there any enjoyment but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of earth? It is the crystallised essence of infinite enjoyment that we have to seek, and that is in God. Let all our passions and emotions go up unto Him. They are meant for Him…
13th May 2024- Look at the “ocean” and not at the “wave.” See no difference between ant and angel. Every worm is the brother of Nazarene. How can you say one is greater and one less? Each is great in his own place. We are in the sun and the stars as much as here. Spirit is beyond space and time and is everywhere.
14th May 2024- The roof that gives you shelter from heat and cold and rain is not to be judged by the pillars that support it, but by the real spirit-pillar who is the center, the real support of the home–the woman. Judged by that standard, the American home will not suffer in comparison with any home in the world.
15th May 2024- The position of the mother is the highest in the world, as it is the one place in which to learn and exercise the greatest unselfishness. The love of God is the only love that is higher than a mother’s love; all others are lower.
16th May 2024- You must bear in mind that by the word “organ” is meant the nerve centre in the brain. The eyes and ears are only the instruments of seeing and hearing, and the organs are inside. If the organs are destroyed by any means, even if the eyes or the ears be there, we shall not see or hear. So in order to control the mind, we must first be able to control these organs. To restrain the mind from wandering outward or inward, and keep the organs in their respective centers, is what is meant by the words śama and dama. Śama consists in not allowing the mind to externalize, and dama, in checking the external instruments.
18th May 2024- “This ‘I and mine’ causes the whole 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.” (From ‘Complete Works’, Vol. 1, Karma-Yoga)
20th May 2024- Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything for themselves. We want a personal God, a savior, or a prophet to do everything for us. The very rich man never walks; he always goes in a carriage. But in the course of years, he wakes up one day paralyzed all over. Then he begins to feel that the way he had lived was not good after all. No man can walk for me. Every time one did, it was to my injury. If everything is done for a man by another, he will lose the use of his own limbs. Anything we do ourselves, that is the only thing we do. Anything that is done for us by another never can be ours. You cannot learn spiritual truths from my lectures. If you have learned anything, I was only the spark that brought it out, made it flash. That is all the prophets and teachers can do. All this running after help is foolishness.
21st May 2024- Truth, purity, and unselfishness-wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.
22nd May 2024- When the mind becomes strong and controlled and has the power of finer perception, it should be employed in meditation. The meditation must begin with gross objects and slowly rise to finer and finer, until it becomes objectless.
23rd May 2024- As we increase our power to be happy, we also increase our power to suffer, and sometimes I am inclined to think that if we increase our power to become happy in arithmetic progression, we shall increase our power to become miserable in geometric progression. We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is Maya.
24th May 2024- All the worship that you have seen in any country in the world, or in any religion, is regulated by love. There is a good deal that is simple ceremony; there is also a good deal which, though not ceremony, is still not love, but a lower state. Yet these ceremonies are necessary. The external part of Bhakti is absolutely necessary to help the soul onward. We make a great mistake when we think that we can at once jump to the highest state.
Buddha Purnima All my life I have been very fond of Buddha… I have more veneration for that character than any other- that boldness, that fearlessness, and that tremendous love! He was born for the good of men. Others may seek God, others may seek truth for themselves; he did not even care to know truth for himself. He sought truth because people were in misery. How to help them, that was his only concern. Throughout his life he never had a thought for himself. (CW of Swami Vivekananda- Vol 8, pg. 103)
28th May 2024- After my experience of Nirvikalp Samadhi, I failed to reach that state again even after trying repeatedly. On informing Sri Ramakrishna about it, he said, “If you remain day and night in that state, the work of the Divine Mother will not be accomplished; therefore you won’t be able to reach that state at present; when your work is finished, it will come to you again.”
30th May 2024- Every mouth praising the Lord is my mouth, every eye seeing is my eye. We are confined nowhere. We are not the body, the universe is our body. We are magicians waving magic wands and creating scenes before us at will. We are spider in his huge web, who can go on the varied strands wheresoever he desires. The spider is now only conscious of the spot where he is, but he will in time become conscious only where the body is, we can use only one brain. But when we reach superconsciousness, we will know all, we can then use all brains. Even now we can “give the push” in consciousness, and it goes beyond and acts in the superconscious.
31st May 2024- ‘Uparati” consists in not thinking of things of the senses. Most of our time is spent in thinking about sense objects, things which we have seen, or we have heard, which we shall see or shall hear, things which we have eaten, or are eating, or shall eat, places where we have lived, and so on. We think of them or talk of them most of our time. One who wishes to be a Vedanta student must give up this habit.