The one who desires a nice comfortable life is a fool.

HINTS ON PRACTICAL SPIRITUALITY.

The Home of Truth. LA.

29 Dec, 1899. (CW – vol 2).

1- The more we learn, the more we find out how ignorant we are. 2- This is unjust. Woman is as courageous as man. 3- The whole universe is one perfect balance. 4- It was said if the masses were educated the world would go to ruin. 5– Germany had educated the masses and had paid higher wages than England. 6– In India especially, we meet old fogies all over the land. 7– Because there was no England to come to. Would they preach to the forests? 8– Fifty years ago you would have been hanged in this country! (Ingersoll to Swamiji). 9– There is superstition also in the matter of science. 10– In India, they will persevere for ages and ages. 11– Nothing could be more foolish to the Hindu mind than saying, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’. 12– This Life-Energy [Prana] is electricity, it is magnetism; thrown out by the brain as thought. 13– The highest production of vibration is thought. 14– When the intake of Life-Energy is working rhythmically, everything works properly. 15– Life is only vibration. That which vibrates this ocean of ether, vibrates you. 16– Birth, Life and Death are but old superstitions. 17– This is the first fact of consciousness – I AM. 18– It is a headache without a head! 19– The reality of everything is The One, Same Infinite. 20– ‘That’ which works through all hands, sees through all eyes, breathes through all bodies. 21– A person can acquire this control if they multiply infinitely their centre of self-consciousness. 22– Such is the law of balance. 23– The murderers, the wickedest, the unjust, they are all my Christ! 24– She, whose street-walking is the cause the chastity of other women. 25– Seek to control the vast mass of sunken thoughts, automatic in us. 26– We have many things in us; rotting, positively dangerous. 27– That is the goal, the infinite realm of the superconscious. 28– Everyone without exception can attain to this culmination. 29– Nothing is lost in this world, whatever one does remains as one’s own achievement. 30– The one who desires a nice comfortable life is a fool. 31– Use all our energies just to acquire spiritual perfection. 32– It can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing. 33– The whole of this universe is but a series of paintings on a canvas. 34- This is the secret.

Chap. 2       

So let us dream a dream.

THE WAY TO THE REALISATION OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

Universalist Church, Pasadena, LA.

28th Jan 1900  (CW – vol 2).

1- Mankind’s spiritual struggle is represented by various religions. 2- There have always been people trying to bring harmony into these jarring, discordant sects. 3- So long as mankind thinks, so there will be sects. 4- Think of the state of this world when that man can stand up and utter such arrant nonsense, and people cheer him! 5- Consider every religion. Do they contradict or supplement each other? 6- And this is the march of humanity – progress from lower truth to higher truth. 7- The child may develop more than the father but was the father inane? 8- Photos of the same sun, when moving, vary, no two are alike. 9- We are all looking at truth from our different standpoints. 10- As you cannot kill any force in nature, so you cannot kill any spiritual force. 11- You see that priests in every country are very conservative. 12- For them, God alone exists. ‘That’ is the Light before them. 13- The ideas must speak your language, the language of The Soul. 14- If it shows anything, it is how vain people are. 15- Each one of us has a mission to perform in life. Nothing can kill you. 16- Each religion is a throbbing, beating, living heart. 17- All the heaven that ever existed is here and now. 18- Renunciation and spirituality are the two great ideas of India. 19- So let us dream a dream! 20- I believe in acceptance, not toleration. I worship with them all. 21- Is God’s book of spirituality finished? 22- And an infinite number of pages remain yet to be unfolded.

Chap. 3       

VEDANTA AND CHRISTIANITY.

Unitarian Church, Oakland, SF Bay Area.

28 February, 1900. (CW – vol 6).

1- The language of the Soul is one. 2- Each religion claims that its book is the only authentic one. 3- All who have attained any religious nature never wrangle.

Chap. 4      

You can build hospitals for every fly and flea that ever lived but it will not get you salvation.

THE SOUL AND GOD.

Washington Hall, Red Men’s Building. SF.

23 March 1900. (CW – vol 1).

  1- What makes us struggle for something beyond what we see? 2- There is no end to our desires. 3- Then there is another line, the idea of The Soul as one’s ‘Own Soul’. 4- Blood circulation stops, the breath stops but they are not dead. 5- It is neither the body nor the mind. They belong to nature. 6- If ‘That’ left my Soul, my Soul would not exist for a moment. 7- Why is there evil? Why is the world a filthy hole? 8- You make and mould your own life. Don’t lay the blame elsewhere. 9- My ocean of Delusion is very difficult to cross. 10- You can build hospitals for every fly and flea that ever lived but it will never get salvation. 11- I want neither earth nor heaven, nor beauty nor learning nor salvation. But the one thing I do want is: ‘To love You’. 12- Love matter and you become matter. 13- People began to progress when they kicked the devil out and took responsibility upon their own shoulders. 14- All religions are only concerned with the infinite of the external world. 15- Those who seek outside will never find that within. 16- You are not bound. No one was ever bound. You are beyond. 17- I worship myself. No Delusion has any hold of me. 18- Say: ‘Never was there any Delusion. 19- I stand alone! Who cares? We want to be Free!’ 20- Show it and give up all Delusion!

Chap. 5    

MOHAMMED.

Union Square Hall, South Post St, SF.

25 March, 1900. SF. (CW – vol 1)

1- Being persecuted, he began to fight. Then the whole race became united behind him. 2- The first teaching was one of equality. 3- The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. 4- It is the mind that perceives The Infinite. 5- Religion is not a doctrine, not a rule. It is a process.

Chap. 6          

What! Is the world just a combination of the stomach and sex?

DISCIPLESHIP

Washington Hall, Red Men’s Bldg, SF.

30 March 1900. SF. (CW – vol 8).

1- You are ‘That’. You are The Reality. Not to know this is most astonishing. 2- We do not want anyone to break our dream. Teachers are not wanted. 3- I do not care to go to heaven. 4- The rich person has no time to think beyond their possessions, their power, their comforts. 5- To control the internal and the external senses. 6- We have bound ourselves. 7- You are mine. I order you! Do not see! Do not hear! 8- You are just beginning to be a disciple. 9- The mind must be made to quieten down. 10- But if something goes wrong, your mind loses its balance. 11- What! Bring down the mind to this little body! 12- This craving for health, long life; it is an illusion. 13- Realise that you are neither body nor mind but Pure Spirit. 14- It is a tremendous illusion when matter is taken for Spirit, this body is taken for The Soul. 15- There are these mighty Spiritual Giants. They set in motion a tremendous Spiritual Current with their Energies. 16- Each can be a vehicle in this mighty Current of Spirituality. 17- It is an actual Inner Growth, but not in learning or reasoning. 18- The germ of Universal Truth. 19- A talkative fool like me cannot be the Teacher. 20- Silence was the method of the Teacher. 21- The disciple looks on the Teacher as God Itself, totally trusts It and follows It with unquestioning obedience. 22- To conceive an extreme desire to be Free. 23- What! Is the world but a combination of the stomach and sex? 24- We still hanker after all these sense objects. 25- Renunciation of the senses and desires is the only way out. 26- You are all atheists, you do not believe in anything except the senses. 27- Stand you in the Spirit! That is the goal! 28- Then how much more will you think of yourself as the Shining, Immortal Being! 29- To separate the Real from the unreal, continuously. 30- People cross the ocean of life and in their turn they help others to cross.

Chap. 7             

BREATHING AND MEDITATION.

1719 Turk St. SF. Lecture given in his flat.

5 April, 1900. (CW – vol 1).

1- If we can master this body, all the power will develop. 2- If you can get mastery over the body, all misery will vanish. 3- All the misery in the world is in the senses. 4- All misery and happiness is in the senses. We are bound by the senses. 5- A person can control all these and become the master. 6- The practical lessons are with the mind, concentration and meditation. 7- Proper food, proper exercise, proper sleep, proper wakefulness – these are necessary. 8- Don’t burn the lamp too quickly, let it burn slowly and gently. 9- They will eat cheese that fairly jumps off the table! 10- There will come a time when things you are struggling to give up will become loathsome. 11- Another condition for progress is chastity. The corner-stone of all practice. 12- Be decent people! Be chaste and pure! There is no other way! 13- This is the greater and more difficult world to conquer.

Chap. 8            

When you really think deeply, there is no sense enjoyment there, the senses are out.

None can teach another. You have to work it out for yourselves.

FORMAL WORSHIP.

Red Men’s Bldg. Washington Hall. SF.

10 April. 1900. (CW – vol 6).

 1- The priests representing conservatism, the prophets representing progress. 2- They conceived the stone as spirit or the tree as spirit. 3- They feel that the presence of the saint is somehow in the relic, and it helps them. 4- There is a higher order of formal worship – the world of symbolism. 5- The sign of everything that is good, gives health, is  strength. 6- The whole of religion is our own inner perception. 7- All my life I repeat what Jack said or what John said. 8- The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind. 9- None can teach another. You have to work it out for yourselves. 10-  No use in swallowing doctrines that others pass on. 11- When God is the means to the end, that is material. When God is the end and the world is the means to that end, spirituality has begun. 12- We have not gone beyond the animals and the birds. We do not know any better. 13- Every time you do that, you are hypnotising yourself with the idea, ‘I am matter and this matter is the goal’. 14- Gradually, the mind begins to think of something higher than the senses. 15- When you really think deeply, there is no sense enjoyment there. The senses are out. The body is left behind. It is that, that makes the human. 16- Glimpse after glimpse will come from the realm of the Spirit. You’re finished with Yoga. 17- ‘I do not want salvation. I only want one thing: Be Thou my love!’

Chap. 9             

The senses are all Delusion.

Stand up and fight!

THE GITA ‘2’.

770 Oak St. SF. Dr. Logan’s house.

28 May, 1900. (CW – vol 1)

1– When he (King Arjuna) knows he has to kill friends and relatives on the other side, his heart gives way. He says he will not fight. Thus begins the Gita. 2– The nearer we are to beasts and birds, the more we are in the hells of emotion. We call it love. It is self-hypnosis. 3- This emotion that has got hold of you – it is in the senses. 4- Know that ‘That’ is without beginning, without end. The ‘Dweller’ in the body is without end. 5- Knowing this, stand up and fight! Not one step back. 6- ‘This bending the knee to Delusion, this selling out does not befit You, My Soul!’ 7- The mind that is concentrated succeeds. The mind taken up with two thousand subjects has its energies dispersed. 8- The senses are all Delusion. 9- The Vedas teach nothing but nature, the senses and human traits. Go beyond! [to Vedanta]. 10- Who can work without any attachment? When they see that this attachment is all a Delusion. 11- Then they go beyond the scriptures. What book shall you quote? Stand alone! 12- When they long for nothing. 13- Be natural. No asceticism. Work, but mind you stay detached. 14- Where it is dark, the ignorant are asleep, they do not have the time; that is daylight for the Sage, there they are awake.

Chap. 10            

There is only one sin. It is weakness.

THE GITA ‘3’.

770 Oak St. SF. Dr. Logan’s house.

29 May, 1900. (CW – vol 1).

1- It doesn’t matter if one goes by a carriage, an electric car, or rolling along the ground. The goal is the same. To become what you already are.  2- So much the worse if you think you are the body. ‘Body-gods’ are what you are! 3- You have to see God yourself. No other’s action can help you. 4- There never was a time when the Spirit could be identified with the mind. 5- The food you eat makes the mind. The Soul is beyond all food. 6- It is the energy and The Soul that is worked upon in different ways by matter. 7- The Spirit is the cause of all our thoughts, body-actiions, everything, but is untouched by the feelings of the senses, by nature. 8- The vast majority are under this delusion and they feel they are the doers. 9- Gradually they will understand. Then they’ll see they are not the doers. 10- Even those who know the path, they have to act impelled by their own nature. The atom has to obey the law. 11- There is no value in anything except experience – when it teaches. And our hardships give better experience than enjoyment. 12- The whole universe is bound together by the single chain of cause and result, you being one link, I being another. 13- My path is down here, and your path is way up there and I’m always tempted to give up my path to join you up there. 14- If you take my advice, do not put your neck into the trap of any organised religion. 15- Better to work out your own natural religion. 16- Beware! This fire of lust is unquenchable! The Self desires nothing. 17- Whenever virtue subsides and evil prevails, I come to help mankind. 18- At that moment, when you break the law – your consciousness, mind and body will melt away. 19- We manufacture our own ghosts and demons, and then we cannot get rid of them. We  cover our eyes with our hands crying out: “Somebody give us light.” 20- We are fools and our paths are foolish. 21- With all the rush going on around you, have you that tremendous peace so that nothing can disturb you? 22- We have the brush. A thing comes – we do not like it – so we brush a little, then we look at it again. 23- The ass can carry the whole library, but that doesn’t make him learned at all. 24- One half of the trouble is not our fault but the fault of our parents. 25- You yourself are your only friend and you yourself are your only enemy. All that misery caused by falsely seeking for help elsewhere. 26- There is only one sin. It is weakness. 27- Stand up and die game! If it gets you strength, go down even into hell and get hold of it! 28- There is salvation only for the brave. 29- Then believe in the Real God: ‘Thou art fear. Thou art hell. Thou art the serpent. Come Thou as death!’ 30- All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it and it must vanish! 31- So long as there are two, there must be fear. Where it is all One, there is none to be miserable, none to be unhappy.

Chap. 11        

One of the greatest mistakes of your Western civilisation.                                                                            The heart is the instrument of inspiration.

STEPS TO REALISATION.

228 W 39th St. NY. Beginner’s class. Path of Knowledge [Gnana Yoga]  – given in his rooms.

18 December 1895. (CW vol 1)

1- In each act of perception three things are necessary: the instrument, the organ and the mind. 2- The organ is the nerve centre in the brain. 3- One must give up this habit of thinking or talking about sense-objects. 4- ‘Acceptance of Injustice’ without emotion – detached. 5- One must have tremendous Faith. 6- The mind is only mastered by the Constant Practice of thinking of God. 7- The ‘Intense Desire to be Free’. 8- Every day we run after pleasure, blinded fools that we are. 9- This wild goose-chase of the world. Society goes on and on. 10- The Sage Solon and King Croesus. 11- We are always hoping against hope. 12- He who takes happiness must take misery, they go together. 13- Few know that with pleasure comes pain and with pain comes pleasure. 14- The Sage wants Freedom, Awakening. 15- When one realises this slavery, then comes the ‘Intense Desire to be Free’, an intense desire comes. 16- To judge between the Real and the unreal. 17- What do we do? We take off the Delusion and the Soul expresses Itself in Its Innate Freedom. 18- Why is this discipline so necessary? 19- You teach only using the intellect, you take no care of the heart. It only makes you tenfold more selfish. You have not educated your heart! 20- The intellect and reason are limited [by words, our poor judgement with wrong values, delusions]. The heart is boundless [by feelings, positive emotions. There can be negative emotions there too – managed if trained]. 21- It is the heart that takes one to the highest plane, not the intellect. 22- The heart is the instrument of inspiration. 23- Properly cultivated, the heart will go beyond the intellect. 24- A person who has a heart gets the ‘butter’ and the ‘buttermilk’ is left for the intellectual. 25- Are you pure? If you are, you will reach God. 26- As soon as it is pure, all Truth will be expressed in your heart. 27- It is the culture of the heart, not the intellect, that will lessen the misery of the world. 28- Hundreds of sciences have been discovered with the result that the few have made slaves of the many. 29- Through the heart The Lord speaks. Through the intellect you, yourself speak. 30- He who comes with a pure heart and reverent attitude will have the doors opened, will see the Truth. 31- If you come with only the intellect, you cannot have the Truth, you can have intellectual gymnastics. 32- We must approach spirituality with reverence. 33- Where is the field of spirituality? 34- What is the proof of God? Direct perception. 35- But this perception is beyond this plane of the senses. 36- No life will be a failure. No one will be lost

Chap. 12            

With this increase in the means comes the increase in want.

THE CLAIMS OF RELIGION.

Hardman Hall, 19^th St & 5^th Ave, NY.

5 January 1896. (CW – vol 4).

1- We are bound by The Illimitable, The Unknowable, The Ever-Unknown. 2- The search has been in the mind from the beginning of humanity. 3- Religions do not come from without but within. 4- How can this projection be understood without knowing that which is beyond? 5- How can you know the human until you Know God? 6- There are attempts at a system of ethics from mere grounds of usefulness and practicality. 7- If one nation becomes richer it is at the expense of another nation somewhere becoming poorer. 8- With the increase of the means comes the increase of want. 9- Is God dead and gone, leaving His Universe to you and me? 10- Both pessimism and optimism are wrong. 11- The older I get, the more I am trying to avoid the extremes of optimism and pessimism. 12- ‘Nonsense, I am sure they are young couples kissing each other’, said the young lady. 13- Children – they are dreaming golden dreams. 14- It consists in the wealth of Spiritual Thought in your brain. 15- All these theories of heaven show a weakness of the mind. 16- Sad to say, these babies of the world pass for the learned, the most intelligent crowd ever seen. 17- It will make this human animal into a God. 18- What will remain? Nothing but a forest of brutes. 19- The highest result will be in manufacturing a God out of this human animal. 20- There is a higher, keener enjoyment in the intellect than in the senses. 21- The highest wisdom must be this Spiritual Knowledge. 22- Often mistaking this carnal love for Spiritual Bliss. 23- It is where the eyes cannot see, the mind cannot reach, words cannot express. 24- Can one Know The Unknowable? 25- There was that adamantine, impassable wall, the barrier to the senses. 26- A person has much in them that is beyond the senses. 27- There is a higher state – ‘Superconsciousness’. 28- They have brought news from ‘The Beyond’. 29- A friend of mine had a very fine picture. 30- I would not be surprised to hear that he was next in a lunatic asylum. 31- These are the dangers: from frauds and from fools. 32- Religion is here and now, in the present moment. 33- A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle. 34- Being One with The Divinity, there cannot be any further progress, in that sense. 35- When I call you hyenas, ‘Humans’! 36- The time may come when they will find the one element – then the science of chemistry will have become perfect. 37- Religion is a question of being and becoming, not of believing.

Chap. 13         

The Soul is the manufacturer of thought.         

IMMORTALITY.                        

The Metaphysical League of Brooklyn.     

Robertson Hall, Gates Ave, Brooklyn, NY.

17 January 1896. (CW – vol 2).

1- A loved-one is snatched away from us. The Soul asks the old question, ‘What after this?’ 2- The plant, the animal, the human, have birth, live a time, die, and so they complete the inevitable circle. 3- The thread of this One Life, like a chain, the links being many, but still of the same ‘One’ chain. 4- The old idea getting fresher and fresher as knowledge progresses. 5- The child is the adult human ‘involved’. The adult is the child ‘evolved’. 6- This One Mass of Intelligence, from protoplasm to human, is slowly uncoiling itself. 7- Take off all ideas of growth from your mind, it already lies latent in you. It can never grow. 8- All motion in this Universe is in the form of waves, successivley rising and falling. 9- The atoms I take for a thrown combination of dice. 10- How is it possible for anyone to see the future unless it is a regulated future? 11- These cabins on the ferris-wheel are the passing bodies in which fresh batches of Souls are boarding and riding. 12- Thus it is possible to read the past and the future with precision. 13- Every compound must finally get broken up, must go back to its components. 14- The Soul is the manufacturer of thought. 15- The nerves carried a sensation to the brain but the brain has not reacted, as it is occupied by concentrating elsewhere. 16- The Soul is The ‘Illuminator’, in its hands is the instrument of the mind. 17- The real Perceiver/Governor/Creator/ Ruler is the Self of the human. 18- The domain of compounds is only as far as our thought world extends. 19- You were never born. You will never die. That’s for the body, not for the Soul. 20- When you are in a train you think the land is flying past. 21- They who see ‘That‘ which never changes, they are Free, they have reached the goal. 22- Know that every thought and word that weaken you is the only evil that exists. 23- What is it that frightens you? Only ignorance and delusion. 24- Know you are ‘That’ and model your life accordingly.

Chap. 14          

THE COSMOS. MACROCOSM.

We are born of ‘That’, live in ‘That’ and unto ‘That’ we will return.                                                                                Intelligence must be the cause.

Hardman Hall, 19^th St & 5^th Ave, NY.

19 Jan 1896. (CW – vol 2).

 1- When darkness was hidden in darkness. Whence was this? 2- Every answer to this question contained a part of the truth. 3- There was a time when our Mother Earth did not exist. 4- Everything in nature begins from a seed, in fine form it grows to develop a grosser form, then goes back to fine form and subsides. 5- If the universe is built on the same plan as the atom, then, ‘By knowing one lump of clay, we know all the clay’. 6- This is what is called destruction, going back to the cause. 7- So, rising and falling, the cycle goes on. So with all lives, everything, it is like breathing in and breathing out. 8- Once subsided, they live in fine forms only to emerge once again as new earths, suns and stars. 9- The seed has an inactive period, it breaks up the soil – degenerates, then re-generates. 10- The whole of this universe has been created out of a finer, minute universe. 11- The seed is the father of the tree, and the tree in turn is the father of the next seed. 12- This involution and evolution continues – from the lowest to the highest – in the beginning it must have been the involution of something else. 13- But this objection by the evolutionists does not hold water. 14- There cannot be added to this universe one particle nor one removed. 15- What is this intelligence? 16- The highest understanding the human has is this intelligence. Intelligence must be the cause, the Lord of creation. 17- It is certain, in the beginning, that there was the Infinite Cosmic Intelligence. 18- I have been asked, ‘Why do you use that old word, God?’ 19- The word God: all that is great and holy has been associated with it. 20- All forms of energy (thought, force, matter) come from That Cosmic Intelligence. 21- ‘That’ comes as the gentle showers, ‘That’ is the Mother Earth. 22- ‘That’ is involved in the minute cell, is evolved at the other end to become God again. 23- In one word, we are born of ‘That’, live in ‘That’ and unto ‘That’  we will return.

Chap. 15            

All Hallucinations: I have a mind, I will think!

THE FREE SOUL.

228 W. 39th St. NY. A Gnana-Yoga class in Swamiji’s rooms.

22 Jan, 1896. (CW – vol 3)

1- One spark of that Infinite Fire.  2- The real sun appears in the spray as millions of suns in droplets, so the millions of Souls are only reflections of The Real Soul, but are not the Real One. 3- These millions of reflections are illusory, not real – a Delusion. 4- That Infinite Being we are. I am ‘That’. You are ‘That‘. 5- How can you know The Knower? 6- That is why people worship Perfect Beings. 7- The Monists say they were never bound, they were always Free. 8- That I have a mind, I will think, all are hallucinations! 9- Through you, the sun shines, the stars shed their lustre. 10- All of this will vanish. This is Realisation. 11- As the potter’s wheel keeps turning from its momentum, so this body will continue for some time. 12- When misery comes the mind says, “I recognise you as an hallucination”. 13- They have realised that they are One with God. 14- Once you have Known that you are ‘That’, all of ‘That’, all fear ceases. 15- Being ‘That’, you are always ‘That’. 16- This is what is taught by Sages on the Path of Knowledge [Gnana Yogi]. It is a very hard path. This body; it must go! 17- I  am ‘That’! I am ‘That’! 18- I praise myself, I blame myself, I suffer for myself. I am Free. 19- There is but One Existence, everything else is nothing. 20- How did sin come into this world? 21- Then you ask how the Perfect became the imperfect. 22- The effect is Delusion, therefore the cause must be Delusion. 23- Beyond Delusion is Freedom. 24- To say that the will is Free is sheer nonsense. 25- People are compelled to think they are Free. 26- This ‘nonsense-universe’ of the senses, of the body and of the mind. 27- So this is the law. There is no Freedom within this Delusion. 28- Some extraordinary people say the idea of God is a Delusion! 29- We must always bear in mind we are Free already. 30- Who are fit to be Sages on the Path of Knowledge? 31- Then comes controlling the mind, calming it, removing desires. 32- Bearing all miseries without murmuring. 33- Spirituality is not frothy words, it is to be carried out in this life. It is not running after enjoyments. 34- Go beyond that if you dare, go beyond the law, let it all vanish.

Chap. 16       

Intelligence Illumines all Matter.

THE COSMOS. MICROCOSM.

Hardman Hall, 19th St and 5th Ave. NY.

26 January 1896. (CW – vol 2).

1-  By this questioning of the internal, the human comes into a higher state of civilisation, so has reached a higher level of development. 2- Is there nothing permanent that does not die away when this frame crumbles into dust? 3- Each time the answer came it gained more and more strength. 4- We speak the language of God in the language of poor humanity. 5- What is wanting? The mind, the carrier, is not there. So it doesn’t reach the king of the body, the human Soul. 6- This Soul is beyond them all – intellect, mind, organs. 7- The mind is not the Soul, because the Soul can neither decay nor degenerate. 8- Because knowledge, the basis of intelligence, cannot belong to dull, dead matter. 9-  ‘That’ which is ‘Self-illuminating’ cannot decay. ‘That’ which is Light Itself; nothing can make ‘It’ come and go, flourish or decay. Intelligence illumines all matter. 10- The mind is not ‘Self-illuminating’. It waxes and wanes, is vigourous and then weak and can be pulled here and there. 13- The mind borrows its powers from the Soul. 14- It naturally follows that this Soul cannot have been created. 15- ‘It’ is expressing Its own grandeur, working through the mind and body, grasping the external world and understanding it. 16- If you are going to exist in eternity in the future, it must be that you have existed through eternity in the past. 17- In place of the old popes of religion they have placed the modern popes of science. 18- Then all this thirst for enjoyment, this clinging onto life will vanish for ever. 19- “I care not even for thee, O Death, what terrors hast thou for me?” This will come to all. 20- How is it that a duckling hatched by a hen, jumps into the water and swims? Instinct. 21- Instinct is not possible unless there has been experience, from past actions. 22- When I look at you in the lake of my mind there is a wave. Though the wave subsides, an impression remains. How can a mental impression remain, as an experience, if the body dissolves to nothing? The Soul must carry  it. 23- This instinct – it cannot come through the bioplasmic cell. 24- ‘It’ then knows what ‘It’ is. Ignorance has vanished. ‘It’ has become perfect. 25- Where is fate? And who is fate? 26- We make our own destiny. 27- Blame no one. Blame yourselves and try to do better. 28- This depression I suffer is of my own doing. 29- All the strength and succour is within yourselves.

Chap. 17              

Nobody has rights. Nobody exists separately.

THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN.

Concert Hall, Madison Square Garden, NY.

16 Feb 1896. (CW – vol 2).     

1- I shall try to harmonise the ancient thinkers with the modern. 2- The Hindu searches for unity, not the detail but the universal. 3- There is a finite matter, Akasha, running as a thread through all phenomena. 4- All forms of power are seen as: force, attraction, repulsion, thought; they are different expressions of the ‘Life-Energy’. 5- The process of creation oscillates up and down, has done so since eternity. 6- Both Matter [Akasha] and Energy [Prana] are resolved to the higher entity, the mind, from which comes ‘Thought-Power’. 7- Thought is a finer expression than Matter [Akasha]. 8- The eye is not the organ of vision, it is only the instrument. 9- As with all sensations, sometimes the signal is not received. 10- The signal has to reach the intellect and only then is there a reaction, this reaction is perception. 11- It needs one step more beyond the intellect; this perception. 12- What is it that pieces together all our impressions into a united whole? Our Soul. 13- ‘It’ is called God. In the individual, ‘It’ is the Soul of the human being – ‘It’ evolves as the mind. 14- Is one’s Soul the creator of one’s mind? 15- The Soul carries the accumulated forces of our impressions. 16- They who see The Soul – for them body and mind have vanished. 17- So the One Soul, the One Existence of the Universe, is reflected on all the fine spray droplets, and so appears to be various. 18- There is One Soul, One Self, Eternally Perfect. 19- Delusion – ignorance, does not exist. 20- This Universe is an ocean of thought where each one of us is a point called the mind. 21- What becomes of the Dualist with his beliefs after death? 22- Class question: Why does the earth not fall? Where should it fall to? 23- The very question of birth and death is utter nonsense. 24- Who changes? Not I. Who comes and goes? Not I. 25- They will only see those who are in the same state of mind. 26- These heavens are all of a person’s own making. 27- While the Perfect Beings Realise ‘It’ as God Itself. 28- All fears are ended. Pains fly and with them fly pleasures, earths, heavens vanish, bodies vanish and minds too. 29- The Knowing person finds they are One with That Existence. 30- ‘Is it possible to Realise this?’ ‘It is’. 31- This external hallucination of body and mind. 32- This is the goal of the Vedanta follower, to attain Freedom while living. They are called ‘The Living Free’. 33- One day I was very thirsty so I set out for one of these lakes. 34- We are travelling in this ‘mirage’ world, day after day, not knowing it. 35- The sharp distinction between The Reality and this mirage has now become known. This world will not be the same. 6- Within the law is bondage, beyond the law is Freedom. 37- The will can never be Free since it is in contact with the Ego. 38- Nobody has rights. Nobody exists separately. 39- There is neither man nor woman, the Soul is without gender, the Ever-Pure. 40- Until the past impurities are entirely burnt up, it is impossible for anyone To See, To Be, To Realise. 41- Those who have Realised the Truth do not require reasoning or mental gymnastics. 42- Until you reach Realisation, there is no difference between you and the atheists. 43- The husband will love the wife the more when he knows she is God Itself. 44- If all mankind Realise only a bit of the Truth, then peace would reign, quarrelling and fighting would cease. 45- The great ideal of Love would be so powerful, no whip will be needed to guide Mankind. 46- If one millionth of the world would simply sit down and say for a few minutes, ‘You are all God. You are all expressions of the One Living Deity’. 47- His thoughts will permeate the atmosphere and the very air we breath will pulsate with ‘You are THAT!’

Chap. 18            

Perfection means Infinity. Expression means limit.

REALISATION.

39 Victoria St. London.

29 Oct 1896. (CW – vol 2).

1- A cat ruling the Universe would have a ‘cat’ solution. 2- That selfish position we are apt to take – with our conception of the Universe. 3- We only know the Universe through the five senses. 4- They want an explanation to a world of all beings, all phenomena. 5- The one basis for existence cannot be found in the world we see and know – that is only partial. 6- Where is that centre? It is within us. 7- Nachiketas saw his father was cheating on his vow. 8- ‘To whom will you give me? You’ve vowed to give away everything’. 9- Thee I give unto Death! [Yama]. 10- So Nachiketas goes to Yama’s world. 11- Nachiketas asks Yama for the second boon. 12- Nachiketas, ‘I desire to be instructed on what happens after a person dies’. 13- Yama, ‘Do not press me on this point, O Nachiketas’. 14- ‘Ask for sons, grandsons, cattle, elephants, horses and gold. Heavenly maidens and music, let them serve you’. 15- Nachiketas, ‘These are mere things of a day. You can keep them!’ 16- ‘This only, is the third boon I have chosen – I still ask for it.’ 17- Perfection is one thing and enjoyment is another. These two, having different ends, engage people differently. 18- Vain desires are clamouring, dragging us outwards. 19- To understand this Truth is very difficult. 20- It is a question of fact, not of argument. 21- They think this scientific perception is not possible in religion – they think religious understanding is arrived at by argument. 22- We have to analyse our own Souls and find out what is there. No amount of talk will achieve spiritual understanding. 23- 99.9% of those who attack religion have never analysed their own minds. 24- Spirituality is not in books and temples, it is actual perception, actually experienced. 25- Not one Christian in 20 million is a real Christian. 26- For them, religion is a mere intellectual assent, a mere nothing. 27- Here, it is social opinion that makes us moral, we are little better than mere animals. 28- It was the idea of happiness minus unhappiness. 29- Is this all we can come to? A little weeping, a little dancing, then to die like a dog! 30- The Norwegian heaven is a wild boar hunt and then they all sit to a feast before Odin. 31- There is a Joy that is Absolute. It cannot be the same joy as brought by the pleasures in daily life. Yet, every little joy contributes to That Absolute Joy. 32- AU-MM. So sacred. The ultimate sound – proclaimed repeatedly, all through Vedanta [towards mastery, for clarity, the lifting of a load]. 33- One thing, pleasurable today, can give pain tomorrow. 34- This Soul is not to be Realised by speech, intellect, study. 35- In India the Sages were very bold thinkers. They produced the Vedas, sacred, eternal. 36- To those that are pure, true and control the senses, this Self expresses Itself. 37- Beyond all sight, all taste, all form, all touch, Absolute, Infinite – once Realised; they are Free from the jaws of death. 38- Awake! Arise! Stop not till the goal is reached! 39- In all of us, we are prompted by our past. 40- My dear dog! Your pleasure is only in the senses, you know nothing beyond. Mine is beyond, says the scientist. 41- ‘What is pleasurable to you has no attraction for me’. 42- We must have our full run. Only when the run is finished does the other world open. 43- This earth will always remain the same. 44- They do not eat each other’s flesh but now they cheat each other. 45- I do not see what you call progress, is other than the multiplication of desires, this longing for more. 46- The strong eats up the weaker. Populations are growing and some wild animals are decreasing, we are taking away all their means of sustenance, killing them off. 47- Perfection means Infinity. Expression means limit. 48- But we know that Adam fell, that the human is a degradation. To emerge from this bondage we have to be free of the senses. 49- The watchword of all ethical codes, ‘Not I, but you’. 50- We must reach Perfection, done by giving up imperfection. 51- The moments we really enjoy are when we have forgotten ourselves.

Chap. 19       

Christine ‘1’. Reminiscing.

‘If we had missed this!’ ‘There are some queer people up on the hill with a foreign-looking gentleman’.

Christine Greenstidel 1866-1930, reminisces.

Nun. Helped with Swamiji’s work in India.

From, Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda.

1- He remembers he is the great, glorious, majestic Self. 2- Then one day it happens, those stupendous things. 3- Attending lectures had been part of the deadly monotony. 4- ‘If we had missed this!’ We knew we had found the touchstone. 5- The power that emanated from this mysterious being – it was overwhelming, one almost shrank from it. 6- He burst upon us in a blaze of reddish gold, as if he had caught the concentrated sun’s rays. 7- You are THAT now! Do nothing else but to realise IT! 8- Who can forget the ‘Soul-memories’ stirred within us. 9- All one’s values were changed. 10-‘Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.’ 11- Come and hear this wonderful man, he is like no one we have ever heard. 12- It had the magic power of creating love in those who heard it. 13- The difficulty of speaking when he could see no ray of intelligence. 14- We knew we had found our Teacher. 15- I was at my best at 1000 Islands. 16- This is to be preached by Indians in India and by Americans in America. 17- Sometimes he went into deep meditation. 18- His ”Yes” with an inflection always sent us back for further thought. 19- ‘There are some queer people up on the hill with a foreign-looking gentleman’. 20- It is to Miss Waldo that we owe the book ‘Inspired Talks’. 21- Sometimes he said, ‘I feel 300 years old’. 22- Mrs. Mary Funke – she always thought how she could amuse him and told funny stories. 23- Leon Landsberg had all the great qualities of his Russian-Jewish race. 24- Sometimes there was enough, sometimes there was nothing. 25- I can never do my work under these conditions. 26- The place was in the most undesirable locality. But all came to these squalid rooms. 27- No charge was made for the teaching [one basic rule of Vedanta]. 28- The only ‘right sort of people’ are those whom the Lord sends. 29- To manufacture a few ‘yogis’. 30- Ellen Waldo: ‘What have we ever done to deserve this?’ 31- The cobra has bitten you. You cannot escape. 32- But the road was hard for one bound to conventions. He destroyed all her concepts/values – it seemed to her. 33- She did not appear for three days. 34- It was as if a being had come down from some radiant sphere with a gospel of hope, of joy, of life.

Christine ‘2’.  Reminiscing.

Unthinkable! With a Western BA degree, he sits at the feet of a superstitious idol-worshipper.

35- The divinity we are seeking in heaven, in teachers, in temples, is within us. 36- Concentration is the lamp which lightens the darkness. 37- The sub-conscious, the conscious and the super-conscious. 38- Remember, the super-conscious never contradicts reason. 39- The three steps are: hear it, reason about it, then meditate on it. 40- Chastity. This subject always stirred him deeply. 41- I want a few, 5 or 6 who are in the flower of their youth. 42- Why have all the saints in all religions practised fasting and self-denial? 43- Practising austerity – renouncing. 44- We learned to think clearly and fearlessly. 45- Spirituality brings power, joy, fire, glow, enthusiasm. 46- This indecent clinging to life. 47- ‘Azad, Azad, the Free’, [in Urdu] he cried out. 48- He was giving us the third requisite: the desire to be Free. 49- ‘Arise, awake! You Children of Immortal Bliss!’ 50- The end is Freedom – from the Delusion which enmeshes. 51- ‘Strike off your fetters! Bonds that bind you down. Know, slave is slave, caressed or whipped’. 52- In a lighter vein. 53- Swamiji’s mother: ‘I asked Shiva for a son and He sent me one of his demons’. 54- Stand before a mirror and you will see what I leave you. 55- Early adventures of the spirit. 56- It was unthinkable! He, with a Western education, sits at the feet of a superstitious worhipper of idols [Ramakrishna]. 57- Best of all, he learnt that religion is to be experienced, not believed. 58- This God-intoxicated one left a little band which carried a certainty of the presence of the Master. 59- Swamiji’s years as a mendicant. 60- The palaces of Rajas and the huts of peasants. 61- Till I have shaken India with the thunder of my voice. 62- Swamiji’s first disciple – those eyes had haunted him ever since. 63- He followed a ‘devilish pair of eyes’.  64- In the caves of the Himalayas trying to find a solution within. 65- At the Rajah of Khetri’s palace a skilled dancing-girl starts to sing – Swamiji tries to leave. 66- The ancient glories of India were only a memory. 67- He gave the ‘Teaching of the Soul’. 68- Sisters and Brothers of America. 69- From that moment he never doubted his calling. 70- He was the pioneer, the first preacher of Vedanta. 71- Love. 72- Bliss – Joy. 73- Growth. 74- Incarnations. 75- The Parsees. 76- Christianity. 77- Sameness. 78- The Western outlook demanding comfort at any cost. 79- The Gita. 80- The next great upheaval will come from Russia or China. 81- ‘Europe is on the edge of a volcano. Only a flood of spirituality can save it or it will blow up!’ [19 years later came WW1].

Chap. 21     

Christine ‘3’. Reminiscing.

I preach nothing but strength. He seemed bent on offending and shocking us.

82- Who thinks lightly that the ‘World is beautiful’, is either ignorant or indifferent to the sufferings of others. 83- We too find pleasure in the mire of mud. 84- I preach nothing but Strength! 85- Much that had been of value was cast aside. 86- Swamiji is so powerful he overwhelms me. 87- He seemed bent on offending and shocking us. 88- Did he not see this divinity in the dancing-girl of Khetri? 89- Knowing inflexible, ‘Purist India’s’ view, he still dared to initiate an American woman with the nun’s vows. 90- ‘This is the only way M.L. (his French teacher) can keep from starving’. 91- ‘Poor thing, she has a husband to support!’ 92- ‘Shiver my timbers! Ho, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!’ 93- You see, they are Shiva’s demons. 94- His silent blessing was fraught with power. 95- They were to nurse the sick, to succour the needy, to start new centres – all has been borne out. 96- At the Greenacre Conference – I like their ‘bonne camaraderie’. 97- The freedom (in USA) makes for breadth whilst the intensity (in India) means depth. 98- He was like a sculptor standing before a mass of marble. 99- How could a new life be brought to the women of India? 100- Purity, Discipleship, and Devotion. 101- The wife to her soldier husband: ‘Come back with your shield or on it’. 102- Much that had been learnt must be unlearnt. New values must replace old ones. 103- Let us create conditions so the lotus will become more beautiful. 104- The old methods of education – very limited. 105- If a person is divine now, education must be an uncovering of the knowledge already in them. 106- They should be on fire! With Renunciation and Service. 107- Every woman is part of the Divine Mother, the Divine Energy. 108- See the student as a creature of Light and Knowledge unfolding in Joy, Freedom and Beauty. 109- ‘I am not the body, I am not the mind.’ 110- In the Belur Monastery, Kolkata – it was a very different Swamiji from the one I had known in America. 111 – He had given his message to the West. 112- Whenever virtue subsides and vice prevails, then do I come. 113- It often seemed to us that Swamiji was not consistent.

Chap. 22       

It’s not your money. It’s God’s.

Swamiji meets John Rockefeller at the height of his vast power. He meets Emma Calvé, opera singer, at the height of her fame.

Chap. 23       

Swamiji’s lectures, list.

Chap. 24        

Glossary. English vs. Indian words.

Chap. 25        

Bibliography, Audiography.