Great Throughts Treasury

"We have to go back to philosophy to treat things as they are. We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?"

"We have to seize this unstable mind and drag it from its wanderings and fix it on one idea. Over and over again this must be done. By power of will we must get hold of the mind and make it stop and reflect upon the glory of God."

"We have seen that it is the subjective world that rules the objective. Change the subject and the object is bound to change; purify yourself, and the world is bound to be purified. This one thing requires to be taught now more than ever before. We are becoming more and more busy about our neighbours, and less and less about ourselves. The world will change if we change; if we are pure, the world will become pure. The question is why I should see evil in others. I cannot see evil unless I be evil. I cannot be miserable unless I am weak. Things that used to make me miserable when I was a child, do not do so now. The subject changed, so the object was bound to change; so says the Vedanta."

"We must also remember that in every little village-god and every little superstitious custom is that which we are accustomed to call our religious faith. But local customs are infinite and contradictory. Which are we to obey, and which not to obey? The Br?hmin of Southern India, for instance, would shrink in horror at the sight of another Brahmin eating meat; a Brahmin in the North thinks it a most glorious and holy thing to do—he kills goats by the hundred in sacrifice. If you put forward your custom, they are equally ready with theirs. Various are the customs all over India, but they are local. The greatest mistake made is that ignorant people always think that this local custom is the essence of our religion."

"We may worship anything by seeing God in it, if we can forget the idol and see God there. We must not project any image upon God. But we may fill any image with that Life which is God. Only forget the image, and you are right enough---for out of Him comes everything. He is everything. We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God."

"We have to sense God to be convinced that there is a God. We must sense the facts of religion to know that they are facts. Nothing else, and no amount of reasoning, but our own perceptions can make these things real to us, can make my belief firm as a rock."

"We must always bear in mind that we are not going to be free, but are free already. Every idea that we are bound is a delusion."

"We must get beyond emotionalism if we want the power to renounce. Emotion belongs to the animals. They are creatures of emotion entirely."

"We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth."

"We must be bright and cheerful. Long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world, because it is the best."

"We must keep our dignity before others. Unless we do that, we expose ourselves to insult."

"We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful."

"We must overcome difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it."

"We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we are ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light."

"We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise."

"We must travel, we must go to foreign parts. We must see how the engine of society works in other countries, and keep free and open communication with what is going on in the minds of other nations, if we really want to be a nation again."

"We must remember that our religion lays down distinctly and clearly, that every one who wants salvation must pass through the stage of Rishihood---must become a Mantra-drashta, must see God. That is salvation; that is the law laid down by our Scriptures."

"We say that if a temple, or a symbol, or an image helps you to realize the Divine within, you are welcome to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formulas help you to realize the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, temples, whatever ceremonies you want to bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them; the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward towards the brutes."

"We should not think that we are men and women. But only that we are human beings, born to cherish and to help one another. No sooner are a young man and a young woman left alone than he pays compliments to her, and perhaps before he takes a wife, he has courted two hundred women. Bah! If I belonged to the marrying set, I could find a woman to love without all that!"

"We see that the apparent contradictions and perplexities in every RELIGION mark but different stages of growth. The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul . That is the one universal religion."

"We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet."

"We say that it is freedom that we are to seek and that that freedom is God. It is the same happiness as in everything else; but when man seeks it in something finite, he gets only a spark of it. The thief when he steals gets the same happiness as the man who finds it in God; but the thief gets only a spark with a mass of misery. The real happiness is God. Love is God, freedom is God; and everything that is bondage is not God."

"What do you gain in heaven? You become Gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth."

"What about this marvelous experience of standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty, and of working a whole life, joyful, free -- not goaded on to work like slaves by false human love or ambition?Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round."

"Well, you consider a man as educated if only he can pass some examinations and deliver good lectures..."

"We want to lead mankind in the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this is to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible and the Koran. Mankind ought to be taught that religions are but the varied expressions of THE RELIGION, which is Oneness, so that each may choose that path that suits him best."

"We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom."

"What I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made."

"What good is it if we acknowledge in our prayers that God is the Father of us all, and in our daily lives do not treat every man as brother?"

"What I say is not, ‘Reform’, but, ‘Move on’. Nothing is too bad to reform. Adaptability is the whole mystery of life–the principle underneath which serves to unfold it. Adjustment or adaptation is the outcome of the Self pitted against external forces tending to suppress it. He who adjusts himself best lives the longest. Even if I do not preach this, society is changing, it must change."

"What is material and what is not material? When the world is the end and God the means to attain that end, then that is material. When God is the end and the world is only the means to attain that end, spirituality has begun."

"What is education? Is it book-learning? No. Is it diverse knowledge? Not even that. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful is called education."

"What is the use of talking of one’s mistakes to the world? They cannot thereby be undone. For what one has done one must suffer; one must try and do better. The world sympathizes only with the strong and the powerful."

"What I want to propagate is a religion that will be equally acceptable to all minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic, and equally conducive to action. If professors from the colleges come, scientific men and physicists, they will court reason. Let them have it as much as they want.....Similarly, if the mystic comes, we must welcome him, be ready to give him the science of mental analysis, and practically demonstrate it before him. And if emotional people come, we must sit, laugh, and weep with them in the name of the Lord; we must drink the cup of love and become mad. If the energetic worker comes, we must work with him, with all the energy that we have. And this combination will be the ideal of the nearest approach to a universal religion. Would to God that all men were so constituted that in their minds all these elements of philosophy, mysticism, emotion, and of work were equally present in full! That is the ideal, my ideal of a perfect man. Everyone who has one or two of these elements of character, I consider one-sided; and this world is almost full of such one-sided men, with knowledge of that one road only in which they move; and anything else is dangerous and horrible to them. To become harmoniously balanced in all these four directions is my ideal of religion."

"What is the proof of God? Direct perception, Pratyaksha. The proof of this wall is that I perceive it. God has been perceived by all who want to perceive Him. But this perception is no sense perception at all; it is supersensuous, superconscious."

"What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge."

"What is the use of fighting and complaining? That will not help us to better things. He who grumbles at the little thing that has fallen to his lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling, he will lead a miserable life, and everything will be a failure. But that man who does his duty as he goes, putting his shoulder to the wheel, will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to his share."

"What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt."

"What is the world that is to be given up? It is here. I am carrying it all with me. My own body. It is all for this body that I put my hand voluntarily upon my fellow beings, just to keep it nice and give it a little pleasure; [all for this body] that I injure others and make mistakes."

"What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin."

"What we want is to see the man who is harmoniously developed...great in heart, great in mind, [great in deed]....We want the man whose heart feels intensely the miseries and sorrows of the world.....And [we want] the man who not only can feel but can find the meanings of things, who delves deeply into the heart of nature and understanding. [We want] the man who will not even stop there, [but] who wants to work out [the feeling and meaning by actual deeds]. Such a combination of head, heart, and hand is what we want."

"What you want is character, strengthening of the will. Continue to exercise your will and it will take you higher. This will is almighty. It is character that can cleave through adamantine walls of difficulties."

"Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it!"

"What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?"

"Whatever may be the position of Philosophy, whatever may be the position of Metaphysics, so long as there is such a thing as death in this world, so long as there is such a thing as weakness in the human heart, so long as there is a cry going out of the heart of man in his very weakness, there shall be a faith in God."

"Whatever is true will remain forever; whatever is not, none can preserve."

"Whatever you are doing, put your whole mind on it. If you are shooting, your mind should be only on the target. Then you will never miss. If you are learning your lessons, think only of the lesson. In India boys and girls are taught to do this."

"Whatever you believe, that you will be. If you believe yourselves to be sages, sages you will be tomorrow. There is nothing to obstruct you."

"When a big wave of anger has come into the mind, how are we to control that? Just by raising an opposite wave. Think of love. Sometimes a mother is very angry with her husband, and while in that state the baby comes in, and she kisses the baby; the old wave dies out and a new wave arises, love for the child. That suppresses the other one. Love is opposite to anger. Similarly when the idea of stealing comes, non-stealing should be thought of; when the idea of receiving gifts comes, replace it by a contrary thought."

"Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be. If you think yourselves strong, strong you will be."