1st February 2024- I am Ramakrishna’s slave, having laid my body at his feet “with Til and Tulasi leaves.” That great sage laid down his life after having attained to superhuman heights of jñāna, bhakti, love, and powers, and after having practiced forty years stern renunciation, non-attachment, holiness, and great austerities. I trust his words as the words of one identified with truth. (Letter to Pramada Das Mitra.)
Change can only be in the limited. To say that the infinite changes in any way is absurd; it cannot be. As limited bodies, you can move and I can move; every particle in this universe is in a constant state of flux. But taking the universe as one whole, it cannot move, it cannot change.
Motion is always a relative thing. I move in relation to something else. Any particle in this universe can change in relation to any other particle, but take the whole universe as one, and in relation to what can it move? There is nothing besides it. So the Infinite is unchangeable, immovable, absolute, and this is the Real Me. Our reality, therefore, consists in the universal and not in the limited. (Jnana Yoga: “The Real Nature of Man” {London, June 21, 1896}. Complete Works, 2.79.)
3rd February 2024- I have been asked many times how we can work if we do not have the passion which we generally feel for work. I also thought in that way years ago. But as I am growing older, getting more experience, I find it is not true. The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work. The energy that ought to have gone out as work is spent as mere feeling, which counts for nothing. It is only when the mind is very calm and collected that the whole of its energy is spent in doing good work. And if you read the lives of the great workers the world has produced, you will find that they were wonderfully calm men. Nothing, as it were, could throw them off their balance. That is why the man who becomes angry never does a great amount of work, and the man whom nothing can make angry accomplishes so much. The man who gives way to anger or hatred or any other passion cannot work. He only breaks himself to pieces and does nothing practical. It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.
5th February 2024- “Man, O Man, you speak of divine love and at the same time are able to attend to all the vanities of this world- are you sincere?
Where Râma is, there is no room for any desire- where desire is, there is no room for Rama; these never coexist- like light and darkness they are never together.”
6th February 2024- Clinging to books only degenerates the human mind. Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare we call God infinite, and yet try to compress God within the covers of a little book! Millions of people have been killed because they did not believe what the books said, because they would not see all the knowledge of God within the covers of a book. Of course, this killing and murdering has gone by, but the world is still tremendously bound up in a belief in books.
7th February 2024- 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, realizing that 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.
8th February 2024- Freedom is possible only when no external power can exert any influence, produce any change. Freedom is possible only to the being who is beyond all conditions, all laws, all bondages of cause and effect. In other words, the unchangeable alone can be free and, therefore, immortal. This being, the Atman, this real Self, the free, the unchangeable, is beyond all conditions, and as such, the Atman has neither birth nor death.
11th February 2024- The ideal of the Yogi, the whole science of Yoga, is directed to the goal of teaching us how, by intensifying the power of assimilation, to shorten the time for reaching perfection, instead of slowly advancing from point to point and waiting until the whole human race has become perfect. (From Swamiji’s book “Raja Yoga,” Chapter Three, “Prana.” Complete Works, 1.157)
13th February 2024- Try to be pure and unselfish–that is the whole of religion.
14th February 2024- 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. Cities come and go, empires rise and fall, planets break into pieces and crumble into dust, to be blown about by the atmospheres of other planets. Thus it has been going on from time without beginning. Death is the end of everything. 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. (Jnana Yoga: “Maya and..)
15th February 2024- It is the Atman’s freedom that is percolating through layers of thought and matter, and, in spite, of the colorings of name and form, is ever asserting its unshackled existence. It is the Atman’s deathlessness, bliss, peace, divinity that shines out and makes itself felt in spite of the thickest layers of ignorance. The Atman is the real person, the fearless one, the deathless one, the free.
16th February 2024- There is one great danger in human nature, and that is, we never examine ourselves. We think we are quite as fit to be on the throne as the king. Even if we are, we must first show that we have done the duty of our own position; and then higher duties will come to us.
17th February 2024- The great strength of Christ is not in his miracles or his healing. Any fool could do those things. Fools can heal others, devils can heal others. I have seen horrible demoniacal men do wonderful miracles. They seem to manufacture fruits out of the earth. I have known fools and diabolical men tell the past, present, and future. I have seen fools heal at a glance, by the will, the most horrible diseases. These are powers, truly, but often demoniacal powers. The other is the spiritual power of Christ which will live and always has lived-an almighty, gigantic love, and the words of truth which he preached.
20th February 2024- When we begin to work earnestly in the world, nature gives us blows right and left, and soon enables us to find out our position. No one can long occupy satisfactorily a position for which he or she is not fit. There is no use in grumbling against nature’s adjustment. (Karma Yoga. New York, 1895. Complete Works, 1.66)
21st February 2024- The other day, I was a guest of Babu Priyanath Mukherjee at Baidyanath. There I had such a spell of asthma that I felt I was dying. But from within, with every breath arose the deep toned sound, “I am He, I am He.” Resting on the pillow, I was waiting for the vital breath to depart, and observing all the time that from within was being heard the sound of “I am He, I am He!” I could hear all along, ‘Evam eva advayam brahma, ne’ha nānāsti kiñcana’, “Brahman, the One without a second, alone exists, nothing manifold exists in the world.”
Like the gentle dew that falls useen and unheard, and yet brings into blossom the fairest of roses, has been the contribution of India to the thought of the world. Silent, unperceived, yet omnipotent in its effect, it has revolutionised the thought of the world, yet nobody knows when it did so.
23rd February 2024- Follow God and you shall have whatever you deserve.
24th February 2024- “In ninety cases out of a hundred, fanatics must have bad livers, or they are dyspeptics, or are in some way diseased. By degrees even physicians will find out that fanaticism is a kind of disease. I have seen plenty of it. The Lord save me from it!
“My experience comes to this, that it is rather wise to avoid all sorts of fanatical reforms. This world is slowly going on; let it go slowly. Why are you in a hurry? Sleep well and keep your nerves in good order; eat right food, and have sympathy with the world. Fanatics only make hatred.”
27th February 2024- When I was in Jaipur, I met a great grammarian and felt a desire to study Sanskrit grammar with him. Although he was a great scholar in that branch, he had not much aptitude for teaching. He explained to me the commentary on the first aphorism for three days, still I could not grasp a bit of it. On the fourth day the teacher got annoyed and said, “Swamiji, I could not make you understand the meaning of the first aphorism even in three days; I fear, you will not be much benefited by my teaching.” Hearing these words, a great self-reproach came over me. Putting food and sleep aside, I set myself to study the commentary on the first aphorism independently. Within three hours the sense of the commentary stood explained before me very clearly. Then I went to my teacher and gave him the sense of the whole commentary. Hearing me, he said, “How could you gather the sense so excellently within three hours, which I failed to explain to you in three days?” After that, every day I began to read chapter after chapter, with the greatest ease. Through concentration of mind everything can be accomplished- even mountains can be crushed to atoms.
28th February 2024- We are all after the Golden Fleece. Every one of us thinks that this will be his. Every reasonable man sees that his chance is, perhaps, one in twenty millions, yet everyone struggles for it. And this is māyā.
29th February 2024- I am strongly of opinion that very few persons in any Yuga attain the highest knowledge, and therefore we should go on striving even unto death.