Great Throughts Treasury

"Straight forwardness without civility is like surgeon’s knife, affective but unpleasant. Condor with courtesy is helpful & admirable."

"The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!"

"The cause of creation is Anu or the Atoms. En masse they are called Maya or the Lord's illusory power; each individual Anu is called Avidya, Ignorance"

"The darkness of maya is silently approaching. Let us hie homeward within."

"The deeper the self-realization of a person, the more they influence the whole universe by their subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less they themselves are affected by the phenomenal flux."

"The eight bondages or snares are hatred, shame, fear, grief, condemnation, race prejudice, pride of family and smugness. Removal of the eight bondages leads to magnanimity of the Heart."

"The Holy Sound Pranava Sabda appears spontaneously through the culture of Sraddha the energetic tendency of heart’s natural love, Veerya the moral courage, Smiriti the true conception and Samadhi the true concentration."

"The Lord responds to all and works for all. Just as He sent rain at my plea, so He fulfills any sincere desire of the devotee. Seldom do men realize how often God heeds their prayers. He is not partial to a few, but listens to everyone who approaches Him trustingly. His children should ever have implicit faith in the loving-kindness of their Omnipresent Father."

"The purpose of this book is to show as clearly as possible that there is an essential unity in all religions; that there is no difference in the truths inculcated by the various faiths; that there is but one method by which the world, both external and internal, has evolved; and that there is but one Goal admitted by all scriptures"

"The rishis wrote in one sentence profundities that commentating scholars busy themselves over for generations. Endless literary controversy is for sluggard minds. What more quickly liberating thought than ‘God is’ - nay, ‘God’?"

"The Virture of Love the Heart’s natural love is the principal requisite to attain a holy life. When this love, the heavenly gift of Nature, appears in the heart, it removes all causes of excitation from the system and cools it down to a perfectly normal state; and, invigorating the vital powers, expels all foreign matters- the germs of diseases-by natural ways (perspiration and so forth). It thereby makes man perfectly healthy in body and mind, And enables him to understand properly the guidance of Nature."

"The world illusion, maya, is individually called avidya, literally, not-knowledge, ignorance, delusion. Maya or avidya can never be destroyed through intellectual conviction or analysis, but solely through attaining the interior state of nirbikalpa Samadhi."

"There is a deeper astrology, not dependent on the testimony of calendars and clocks. Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth. The human eye sees the physical form, but the inward eye penetrates more profoundly, even to the universal pattern of which each man is an integral and individual part."

"To keep company with the guru is not only to be in physical presence (as this is sometimes impossible), but mainly means to keep him in our hearts and to be one with him in principle and to attune ourselves with him."

"What a person imagines he hears, and what the speaker has really implied, may be poles apart."

"When this love becomes developed in man it makes him able to understand the real position of his own Self as well as of others surrounding him."

"When this love, the heavenly gift of Nature, appears in the heart, it removes all causes of excitation from the system and cools it down to a perfectly normal state; and, invigorating the vital powers, expels all foreign matters- the germs of diseases-by natural ways (perspiration and so forth). It thereby makes man perfectly healthy in body and mind, And enables him to understand properly the guidance of Nature."

"Wisdom is not assimilated with the eyes, but with the atoms. When your conviction of a truth is not merely in your brain but in your being, you may diffidently vouch for its meaning."