Great Throughts Treasury

"The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still."

"The peace of the Bhakta's calm resignation is a peace that passeth all understanding, and is of incomparable value."

"The path of devotion is natural and pleasant. Philosophy is taking the mountain stream back to its source by force. It is a quicker method but very hard. Philosophy says, Check everything. Devotion says, Give up all to the stream, have eternal self-surrender. It is a longer way, but easier and happier."

"The power is with the silent ones, who only live and love and then withdraw their personality. They never say me and mine; they are only blessed in being instruments."

"The power of purity—it is a definite power."

"The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine."

"The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets."

"The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of the mind should be taught first."

"The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: 'Whosoever comes to me, though whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.'"

"The Real Man is one and infinite, the omnipresent spirit. And the apparent man, however great he may be, is only a dim reflection of the Real Man, who is beyond. The Real Man, the Spirit, being beyond cause and effect, not bound by time and space, must therefore be free....The apparent man, the reflection, is limited by time, space and causation, and is therefore bound. Or in the language of some of our philosophers, he appears to be bound, but really is not."

"The purer the mind, the easier it is to control. Purity of the mind must be insisted upon if you would control it.....Perfect morality is the all in all of the complete control over mind. The man who is perfectly moral has nothing more to do; he is free."

"The proof of one religion depends on the proof of all the rest. For instance, if I have six fingers, and no one else has, you may well say that is abnormal. The same reasoning may be applied to the argument that only one religion is true and all others false. One religion only, like one set of six fingers in the world, would be unnatural. We see therefore, that if one religion is true, all others must be true. There are differences in non-essentials, but in essentials they are all one. If my five fingers are true, they prove that your five fingers are true too."

"The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them."

"The root of evil is in the illusion that we are bodies. This, if any, is the original sin."

"The road to the Good is the roughest and steepest in the universe. It is a wonder that so many succeed, no wonder that so many fall. Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles."

"The salvation of India, therefore, depends on the strength of the individual, and the realization by each man of the divinity within."

"The sages are often ignorant of physical science, because they read the wrong book—the book within; and the scientists are too often ignorant of religion, because they too read the wrong book—the book outside."

"The scriptures of different religions point out different means to attain the ideals of universal love, freedom, manliness, and selfless benevolence. Every religious sect is generally at variance as to its idea of what is virtue and what is vice, and fights with others over the means of attaining virtue and eschewing vice, instead of aiming at realizing the end. Every means is helpful more or less, and the Gita (XVIII.48) says, Every undertaking is attended with defects as fire with smoke; so the means will no doubt appear more or less defective. But as we are to attain the highest virtue through the means laid dozen in our respective scriptures, we should try our best to follow them. Moreover, they should be tempered with reason and discrimination. Thus, as we progress, the riddle of virtue and vice will be solved by itself."

"The search for truth is the expression of strength — not the groping of a weak, blind man."

"The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience."

"The secret of religion lies not in theories but in practice. To be good and do good — that is the whole of religion. ‘Not he that crieth Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of the Father’."

"The Self when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Self when it appears behind this little universe—the body—is the soul."

"The sum total of this whole universe is God Himself. Is God then matter? No, certainly not, for matter is that God perceived by the five senses; that God as perceived by the intellect is mind; and when the spirit sees, He is seen as spirit. He is not matter, but whatever is real in matter is He."

"The so-called great men of the world may all be seen to become jealous of each other for a small name, for a little fame, and for a few bits of gold. So long as this jealousy exists in a heart, it is far away from the perfection of Ahimsa."

"The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything."

"The Soul is not composed of any materials. It is unity indivisible. Therefore it must be indestructible."

"The Self is the eternal subject, and we are struggling all the time to objectify that Self. And out of that struggle has come this phenomenal universe and what we call matter, and so on. But these are very weak attempts, and the highest objectification of the Self possible to us is the Personal God. This objectification is an attempt to reveal our own nature."

"The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practiced in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others."

"The tender plant of spirituality will die if exposed too early to the action of a constant change of ideas and ideals. Many people, in the name of what may be called religious liberalism, may be seen feeding their idle curiosity with a continuous succession of different ideals. With them, hearing new things grows into a kind of disease, a sort of religious drink-mania. They want to hear new things just by way of getting a temporary nervous excitement, and when one such exciting influence has had its effect on them, they are ready for another. Religion is with these people a sort of intellectual opium-eating, and there it ends."

"The term social progress has as much meaning as hot ice or dark light. There is no such thing, ultimately, as social progress!"

"The test of Ahimsa is absence of jealousy. Any man may do a good deed or make a good gift on the spur of the moment, or under the pressure of some superstition or priestcraft; but the real lover of mankind is he who is jealous of none."

"The ultimate goal of all mankind, the aim and end of all religions, is but one---re-union with God, or, what amounts to the same, with the divinity which is every man's true nature. But while the aim is one, the method of attaining it may vary with the different temperaments of men. Both the goal and the methods employed for reaching it are called Yoga, a word derived from the same Sanskrit root as the English yoke, meaning to join, to join us to our reality, God."

"The training by which the current and expression of will is brought under control and become fruitful is called education."

"The universe is — objectified God."

"The utility of this science is to bring out the perfect man, and not let him wait and wait for ages, just a plaything in the hands of the physical world, like a log of drift-wood carried from wave to wave, and tossing about in the ocean. This science wants you to be strong, to take the work in your own hand, instead of leaving it in the hands of Nature, and get beyond this little life. This is the great idea."

"The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us."

"The Vedanta teaches that Nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death and reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self; and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of the personality. Having eyes, we must see the apparent, but all the time we know what it is; we have found out its true nature. It is the screen that hides the Self, which is unchanging. The screen opens and we find the Self behind it. All change is in the screen. In the saint, the screen is thin, and the reality can almost shine through. In the sinner the screen is thick, and we are liable to lose sight of the truth that the Atman is there, as well as behind the saint's screen. When the screen is wholly removed, we find it really never existed--- that we were the Atman and nothing else, even the screen is forgotten."

"The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. As certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism."

"The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that."

"The very reason for nature's existence is for the education of the soul."

"The watchword of all well-being, of all moral good is not ‘I’ but ‘Thou’. Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did, and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist, a Christian or a Mohammedan."

"The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death."

"The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo what you have done; the effect must come. Face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to God. Give all, both good and bad. God helps those who do not help themselves."

"The Vedas say the whole world is a mixture of independence and dependence, of freedom and slavery, but through it all shines the soul independent, immortal, pure, perfect, holy. For if it is independent, it cannot perish, as death is but a change, and depend upon conditions; if independent, it must be perfect, for imperfection is again a condition, and therefore dependent. And this immortal and perfect soul must be the same in the highest God as well as in the humblest man, the difference between them being only in the degree in which this soul manifests itself."

"The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter; perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery."

"The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all."

"The whole of Nature is worship of God. Wherever there is life, there is this search for freedom and that freedom is the same as God."

"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you free."

"The whole universe is one in the Atman. That Atman when it appears behind the universe is called God. The same Atman when it appears behind this little universe, the body, is the soul. This very soul, therefore, is the Atman in us."

"The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence, and that One Existence, when it passes through the forms of time, space, causation, is called by different names, buddhi, fine matter, gross matter, all mental and physical forms. Everything in the universe is that One, appearing in various forms. When a little part of it comes, as it were, into this network of time, space and causation, it takes forms. Take off the network, and it is all one."