NB -  These comments are taken from mid-stream lecturing - without their context - yet they still carry his power. By gently dwelling on a favourite, you will feel this power grow. He's telling you how to manage things. A deeper meaning comes through. Take a screenshot and carry around a few or print them out.

Swamiji is full of contradiction: the main themes: 'Be rational, reason it through', then, 'You only teach with the intellect, have not taken care of the heart' and, 'Follow your heart' - it needs patience and Harmony to manage this.

  It's all about who you are and what you Realise. No amount of books or what you have stuffed into your brain will matter.

 An Indescribable Beyond - for even to think is to limit and so to lose. Not even can we say "is" about It, for that too is relative. Any imagination, any concept is in vain. ”It's not this, It's not this", is all that can be said.

  The eye must see, the ear must hear, the senses must sense this external world. But no question is so near and dear to the thinking person's heart as that of The Internal Person.

 When you see a person going after a beautiful face, do you think that it is the handful of arranged molecules which really attracts the person? Not at all!

 5- Take your country (USA), the richest with all the luxury, how many more lunatics you have compared to others, the desires are so keen.

  They have been great teachers - the things we wish we had never done, the failures. Still progress. I am still glad for them!

  If there be among you any pure, young, fresh flowers who do not desire to join the world, let them give it up!

  We need the strong, the young, the beautiful - to be servants of humanity.

   The message that will save them from driving headlong into the hideous abyss of materialism.

 10- Then the 'Teacher-Within' speaks - the Teacher of all teachers; eternal wisdom speaks in that person's heart.

By not educating the heart, only the intellect, we have created artificial wants and they must be satisfied - these Delusions of the encrusted mind.

  The heart knows things reason can never know. Whenever there is conflict between the pure heart and the cold intellect, always side with the heart.

 Proper food, proper exercise, proper sleep, proper wakefulness are all necessary.

   Stand up and fight! This bending the knee to Delusion, this selling yourself out to your own mind does not befit you, My Soul!

   15- When you can give up money, friends, fathers, mothers, all that is dear in this world.

     The Teacher-Within will teach all the creeds and philosophies.

    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. 

    In restraining one's own passions there is a far higher strength. In suffering there is a greater strength than in doing. Non-resistance is the greatest strength. In meekness and mildness lies the greatest strength. 

     Poverty does not mean indecency. [Fragrant Poverty - Teresa of Avila]

   20- 'That' comes as the gentle showers, 'That' is the Mother Earth. 'That' is involved in each minute cell.

   If all of humanity Realise only a small bit of The Truth, then peace would reign, quarrelling and fighting would cease.

    This modern superstition of the worship of filthy lucre, lust and power.

    Only when we teach a child how to control their mind, do we really help them. 

   One condition for progress is chastity. It is the corner-stone to build upon.

  25- Philosophy is guesswork about the mind.

  Sexual thought and sexual energy, when mastered, become transformed into “Mental Strength”. [Sanskrit: Ojas=Mental Strength from sexual restraint, it accrues. Mental strength means: Clarity, better judgement in life's daily tests, a better attitude to your emotions, educating the heart].

     There is no value in anything except experience. When it teaches. And our hardships give better experience than our enjoyments.

  The highest result is in manufacturing a God out of this animal-man.

   Kant was the first to arrive at this analysis of the mind [projecting], but it was stated in the Vedas long ago.

 30- All Vedanta is grounded on three concepts - time, space, and causation. These produce Delusion [projections], the essential foundation of human thought, but not the product of that thought. This same conclusion was arrived at a later date by the great German thinker Kant.

[Swamiji learned this from his college rector, William Hastie, who was the first to translate Kant into English. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804: 'It's not the thing as such, but it's how you see it'. Claude Monet, 1840-1926: 'No, not so! It's what's between my eye and the cathedral that matters'. On being told he must love Rouen cathedral as he had painted it so many times. He's 'Projecting'.]

 Delusion causes the difference between my two realities: nature and My Soul.

  My two realities, that of nature and that of My Soul, are the same, the difference is in their form of expression. This difference is caused by my  Delusion. The contour of the shore may shape the ocean into a bay, a strait, or an inlet but when this shaping force, or Delusion, is removed, the separate shore forms disappear, the differences cease, all is the ocean again.

     If I can arouse in you the power of thinking for yourselves. My ambition is to talk to men and women, not to sheep. If you just believe what I say, I will be sorry.

   My words will burn their way into your brain.   

    35- That Bliss - where the pleasures of the senses mean nothing.

   Thus have you and I danced throughout the years.

   This ocean of my Delusion is so difficult to cross. 

   The mind is drunk with desire! It is incessantly active by its nature.

   By this questioning of the internal, the human comes into a higher state of civilisation, so has reached a higher level of development. 

  40- But this time they won't find me napping. I've found a thing or two beyond brains, and that is love!

 Perfection is one thing, enjoyment is another. The wise choose perfection, the ignorant choose enjoyment.

02 - Swamiji –

How is it that a duckling, when hatched by a hen, immediately jumps into the water and swims?

  There is no such thing as instinct! Any behaviour a baby has, must come from experience.

 To keep from rushing headlong into the hideous abyss of materialism.

This particle of energy that was in the sun several months ago may be in the human being now. Tomorrow it may be in an animal, the day after it may be in a plant. It is ever coming and going. It is all one unbroken, infinite mass of matter, only differentiated by names and forms. One point is called the sun. Another little point, the moon. Another, the stars. Another even smaller, the human. Another, the animal. Another, the plant, and so on.

[Said 16 Feb 1896, New York lecture. Before the Neutrino, the smallest particle, was discovered in 1930 and maybe defined in 2010(?). Without mass, every second, 10s of billions travel from the sun at the speed of light, through our finger-tips and continue on into space. While most are not electrically charged, there's no mention if they're spiritually charged.]

 5- In this body are two birds: one is the Human Soul, eating the sweet and sour fruits of life. The other is God Itself, no fruit, just looking on!

 The way to solve the problem of depression is through the heart, not through the intellect. If all this vast amount of effort had been spent in making people purer, gentler, more understanding, more forgiving - by so educating the heart, this world would have a thousandfold more happiness than it has today.

 You do not need a Teacher! All a Teacher is for, is to teach us that we do not need a Teacher!

[Swamiji contradicts himself often on this. But still, he said it! 13 July 1895. And the Censors edited it out! Book 1. He also says: 'Experience is the only Teacher', 'The Teacher only brings the food. We have to eat it', 'You will have to teach yourselves', 'The Teacher-Within' – often].

This emotion that has got hold of you! It is in the senses.

You and not I!

I am dead.

You are,

And I am not.

I do not want wealth nor beauty, no!

Nor even learning.

I do not want salvation.

Let me go into a million hells!

I only want one thing:   

Be You my Love!        

 10- Time began when you started to think!

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

 One has to have a crystal clear mind.

 Heavens and hells, and Incarnations are all nonsense! Worship The Self!

 He, a fanatical Muslim, like a Presbytarian here, the same breed! Both believe in barbecuing till eternity!

 15- If we desire only sense-enjoyments, we go down to the 'brute state'.

 In the spray, the one sun appears as millions of suns in the droplets. So the millions of Souls are reflections of The Real Soul.

You continue putting on it patch after patch until you are a mass of patchwork.

So this is the law. There is no Freedom within this Delusion.

There is something beyond, that is not bound by Delusion.

20- This cannot be taught in lectures for it is Life!  

 Reason does not know about unselfishness, about loving my brother. The animals don't do it. Where does it come from? [On animals Swamiji! - we now know elephants protect with unselfish actions and help each other. Unselfish actions are done by gorillas and chimpanzees to help each other - a 5-yr-old child that fell into his enclosure was protected by the head male gorilla from others of his troop coming too close. Youtube: Jambo the gentle giant].

  Then  …  no more is birth, nor I, nor you, nor God, nor man.

  The will can never be free, since it is in contact with the Ego.

  A person used to walk or ride a horse. Now they take the railcar or a tram. The stress shows. (Said in 1900).

   25- The purer the mind, the easier it is to control.

    I am in everybody! What ecstasy of joy! And to realise this!

   Meditate! The Soul thinking of Itself! This marvellous touch of The Soul!

  When you cease utterly to know and see the world, then you Realise The Soul.

    Therefore be silent and Know what you are!

   30- The mind is only mastered by the constant practice of thinking of The Soul.

   A new desire is like putting a stick into a hornets' nest.  

  It consists of the accumulated wealth of Spiritual Thought in your brain.

   The rich person has no time to think beyond his possessions, his power, his comforts.

   First get rid of the Delusion, 'I am the body', then only can we want Real Knowledge.

     35- I do not want this sense-life. I am not the body. I am not the mind.

      You are all Atheists! You believe only in the senses.

    We cannot believe that we will not gain more knowledge.

      Get rid of your petty personalities!     

    Concentrating the mind is the only way to this Knowledge.

    40- The last words of each Forest Book: 'You are That!'

  Some fools drink brackish water when fresh water is nearby, it is because their fathers dug the well!

   Your spiritual energies can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing.

  There is neither man nor woman, The Soul is without gender, the Ever-Pure.

  You and I, the cat, the rat, the devil, the ghost are all God!

  45- It is the culture of the heart, not the intellect, that will lessen depression.

 You will find, day by day, the mind's changes of behaviour become less - it becomes calmer.

Spirituality brings power, joy, fire, glow, enthusiasm.

Until every drop of blood tingles with the idea, I am That!

The food you eat makes the mind.

50- The words that will bring out the tremendous energy within you. The infinite power sleeping in your heart.

Frothy Delusions by Frothy Thinkers! [JS adjusted - First phrase and second said in different classes.]

Intelligence is necessarily coloured by our own tendencies.

Gradually the mind begins to think of something higher than the senses.

The end is Freedom – from the Delusion which enmeshes.

55- Don't burn the lamp too quickly. Let it burn slowly and gently.

They cannot solve it because they cannot go beyond their intellect.

Talking is not actuality

Everything through the senses, mind, intellect is limited.

As each brings his own mind, so he sees his own world.

60-  3 of the 4 Paths followed in Vedanta [But why be in a labelled box?] -

 The Sage on the Path of Work (Karma-Yogi) need not believe in any doctrine whatever. They may not believe even in God, may not ask what their Soul is, nor think of any Spiritual speculation. They have got their own special aim of realising selflessness and they have to work it out themselves. Every moment of their life must be Realisation, because they have to solve it by mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, ['mere' work! The whole heart is in all forms of work].

 The Sage on the Path of Knowledge (the Gnani) applies their reason and inspiration.

 The Sage on the Path of Love (the Bhakti) applies their love to all aspects of life. All is Love.

   [The 4th is the Mystical Path – Raja-Yoga. The 'Deeper-Seeking' Path. The Sage on this Path is called a Raja-Yogi]

03 - Swamiji –

     I 'See' …  and you too can 'See'. 

    Take a common flower – it is Infinite!  Every thought is Infinite! 

 In New York I used to watch the Irish colonists landing; downtrodden, destitute, penniless, fright in their step, alarm in their eyes. In six months they had changed; a different step, upright walk, the expression of fright gone. He had heard, “Pat, you are a man as we are. A man like you and I can do everything, have courage!”

    This “I” is the result of projections, it is no Reality.

    5- The education system is all wrong. First learn to master the mind.

  The Vedas teach nothing but nature, the senses and human traits. Go beyond! [to Vedanta, the Refined Vedas].

     I thought a cave would give me clearer vision, not so! Then a forest - not so! The same mind followed me.

  When you see Delusion, you do not see Reality.    

   Often behind the fine, polished phrase is arrant trash.

  10- They who never think, they are mere jellyfish!

 Every woman is part of the Divine Mother, That Divine Energy.

 This ignorance is the idea of separation, 'dozens-of-them!'

   All the depression in the world is in the senses.

   Luxury is about to kill the religious instinct.

  15- You were never born. You will never die. That is for the body, not for The Soul.

    The last words of each Forest Book are: 'You are That!'

   Do you have anything to give? Then give it!

 Few can permanently cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain.

  The mind that is concentrated succeeds. The mind taken up with two thousand subjects has its energies dispersed.

 20- Your power of reasoning was given you - see that you use it properly.

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

  The great civilisations - they died from going after pleasure!

   Since eternity, millions have been taught that they are helpless, miserable creatures, by the priests.

(You are born a sinner! - Roman Church. Not in Eastern Orthodox!).

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

   25- There is only one sin. It is weakness.

   I ever was and I ever am.

  I do not care to go to heaven.

If The Soul is Free, then nothing outside can act on It, can affect It and It can never die. It is beyond Delusion!

  I am not the body. I am not the mind.

 30-   Spirituality is a question of being and becoming, not of believing.

    Love matter and you become matter.

    Through you the sun shines, the stars radiate their lustre.

   Much that has been learnt must be unlearnt. New values must replace old ones.

  Just as we should be careful with the priests, so should we be with the scientists. 

 35-  You are THAT now! Do nothing else but to Realise IT!

    Neither teachers nor scriptures nor Gods exist.

    'I preach a philosophy'. Swamiji's reply to, 'Will you bring Hinduism to America?'

   The Real Self is intelligence, beyond the material mind.

  All things are struggling to reach that perfect balance. [Harmony].

   40- Be decent people! Be chaste and pure. There is no other way!

  They are like swine wallowing in the mire of the senses!

 Such are the Great Messengers of Light. They are our great teachers, our elder brothers. Still, we must make our own way!

  What then is the value of life? It is to give us experience. 

  Everything struggles to return to its state that it had before these Delusions, to be Free!

 45-   And still, we have to make our own way.  

    What business has my father to put a book in my hand and say 'This is God'?

  Behold, I have no duty. Every duty is bondage. The scorching sun of duty.

   I am a mendicant, an itinerant monk. What can I do?

   Animals are living upon plants, people upon animals and, worst of all, upon one another, the strong upon the weak. This is going on everywhere.

 50- The one way out is through ourselves.

    Such will come to your heart. Seek for nothing else! [The Bliss of Knowing].

    One must give up this habit of thinking or talking about sense-objects.

     This Universe is an 'Ocean of Thought' where each one of us is a point called a mind.

    Vedanta's one great question – Why are people so afraid?

  55-  My mother could memorise any sacred book she wanted in one reading.

   Bless your mistakes then. They are part of you too.

We want 1000s, from the North to the South Poles, to spread this power.

     All fiction! The Soul can never come nor go.   

Not a vegetarian! -

No amount of asparagus and potatoes will give you the strength to carry my case! (To vegetarian helpers when he was moving in San Francisco).

60- I teach meat-eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit.

04 - Swamiji –

     I 'See' …  and you too can 'See'. 

    Take a common flower – it is Infinite!  Every thought is Infinite! 

 In New York I used to watch the Irish colonists landing; downtrodden, destitute, penniless, fright in their step, alarm in their eyes. In six months they had changed; a different step, upright walk, the expression of fright gone. He had heard, “Pat, you are a man as we are. A man like you and I can do everything, have courage!”

    This “I” is the result of projections, it is no Reality.

    5- The education system is all wrong. First learn to master the mind.

  The Vedas teach nothing but nature, the senses and human traits. Go beyond! [to Vedanta, the Refined Vedas].

     I thought a cave would give me clearer vision, not so! Then a forest - not so! The same mind followed me.

  When you see Delusion, you do not see Reality.    

   Often behind the fine, polished phrase is arrant trash.

  10- They who never think, they are mere jellyfish!

 Every woman is part of the Divine Mother, That Divine Energy.

 This ignorance is the idea of separation, 'dozens-of-them!'

   All the depression in the world is in the senses.

   Luxury is about to kill the religious instinct.

  15- You were never born. You will never die. That is for the body, not for The Soul.

    The last words of each Forest Book are: 'You are That!'

   Do you have anything to give? Then give it!

 Few can permanently cure this ever-recurring fever of pleasure and pain.

  The mind that is concentrated succeeds. The mind taken up with two thousand subjects has its energies dispersed.

 20- Your power of reasoning was given you - see that you use it properly.

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

  The great civilisations - they died from going after pleasure!

   Since eternity, millions have been taught that they are helpless, miserable creatures, by the priests.

(You are born a sinner! - Roman Church. Not in Eastern Orthodox!).

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

   25- There is only one sin. It is weakness.

   I ever was and I ever am.

  I do not care to go to heaven.

If The Soul is Free, then nothing outside can act on It, can affect It and It can never die. It is beyond Delusion!

  I am not the body. I am not the mind.

 30-   Spirituality is a question of being and becoming, not of believing.

    Love matter and you become matter.

    Through you the sun shines, the stars radiate their lustre.

   Much that has been learnt must be unlearnt. New values must replace old ones.

  Just as we should be careful with the priests, so should we be with the scientists. 

 35-  You are THAT now! Do nothing else but to Realise IT!

    Neither teachers nor scriptures nor Gods exist.

    'I preach a philosophy'. Swamiji's reply to, 'Will you bring Hinduism to America?'

   The Real Self is intelligence, beyond the material mind.

  All things are struggling to reach that perfect balance. [Harmony].

   40- Be decent people! Be chaste and pure. There is no other way!

  They are like swine wallowing in the mire of the senses!

 Such are the Great Messengers of Light. They are our great teachers, our elder brothers. Still, we must make our own way!

  What then is the value of life? It is to give us experience. 

  Everything struggles to return to its state that it had before these Delusions, to be Free!

 45-   And still, we have to make our own way.  

    What business has my father to put a book in my hand and say 'This is God'?

  Behold, I have no duty. Every duty is bondage. The scorching sun of duty.

   I am a mendicant, an itinerant monk. What can I do?

   Animals are living upon plants, people upon animals and, worst of all, upon one another, the strong upon the weak. This is going on everywhere.

 50- The one way out is through ourselves.

    Such will come to your heart. Seek for nothing else! [The Bliss of Knowing].

    One must give up this habit of thinking or talking about sense-objects.

     This Universe is an 'Ocean of Thought' where each one of us is a point called a mind.

    Vedanta's one great question – Why are people so afraid?

  55-  My mother could memorise any sacred book she wanted in one reading.

   Bless your mistakes then. They are part of you too.

We want 1000s, from the North to the South Poles, to spread this power.

     All fiction! The Soul can never come nor go.   

Not a vegetarian! -

No amount of asparagus and potatoes will give you the strength to carry my cases. (to helpers when he was moving in San Francisco).

60- I teach meat-eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit.

05 - Swamiji -

    It is a cheerful religion, joyful, at times hilarious! Not a bit of pessimism!

    What is behind this remarkable intellect? Zero! Nothing, simply so much froth! [all that assimilation, those conclusions, those established values!]

     Artificial wants have been created and they must be satisfied.

    One of the greatest mistakes of your Western civilisation is you teach using only the intellect, you take no care of the heart. It only makes you tenfold more selfish. And that will be your destruction. You should educate the heart!

    5- The intellect only has its one, limited state; reason. The intellect can only work within that limited state, it cannot get beyond. It's the heart which goes beyond.

     Hundreds of sciences have been discovered with the result that the few have made slaves of the many.

      We give more weight to science than the Spiritual.

     It is because we dare not give up, because we are not resigned enough, that we are depressed.

   Some have two Gods, some have one God and some, none at all.

   10- I have been asked, 'Why do you use that old word, God?'

  If one millionth of the world would simply sit down and say for a few minutes each day, 'You are all God!'

     Welcome depression, you are also from The Beloved.

    Gradually the mind begins to think of something higher than the senses.

  The Soul of a person commands the faculties, they obey.

  15- The Soul of a person really expresses, directs these senses.

    God is not a judge.

  In place of the old popes of religion they have placed the modern popes of science.

    Stand up and fight! Not one step back! Know you are The Unchanging Infinite!

    Some extraordinary people say the idea of God is a delusion.

  20- When the intake of 'Life Energy/Oxygen' is working rhythmically, everything works properly. This important rhythmic action is necessary.

   Europe is on the edge of a volcano. Only a flood of spirituality can save it or it will blow up. [said in 1895. 19 years later came WW1].

   One half of the trouble is not our fault but the fault of our parents.

    Our minds have lost sight of the finer motions inside us.

  Ignorance is the mother of all selfishness, depression.

 25- Where there is any real thinking the Soul grows Godwards, bondage vanishes, Karma's results fly! [Karma=your own 'baggage'!]

 Going further, when Knowledge comes, all delusions vanish.

 Bibles, Vedas, Korans, and others; but they are only words, external arrangement, syntax, the etymology, the philology, the dry bones of religion.

 That which is selfish is immoral, that which is unselfish is moral.

 Never want to go to heaven, that is the worst delusion.

  30- Heaven is a desire, a superstition, ever a yoke.

 The horrible 'body-idea' that breeds all the selfishness.

 To feel the release from fear more clearly than I see this world.

 Good and evil are found everywhere and the balance is wondrously even.

In the ocean we cannot raise a wave without causing a trough somewhere else. The sum total of the good things in the world has been the same throughout in its relation to a person's need and greed. It cannot be increased or decreased.

  [Swamiji says: The law of balance is playing out. The more you gain somewhere, so the greater someone else's loss – all in direct correlation. He states it's a law, it has to balance. As did one of the Greek philosphers. Good/Bad. Poor/Rich. Strong/Weak. Knowledge/Ignorance. As one increases their strength, so another weakens. One's wealth grows, so another becomes poorer. One's knowledge increases, so another's ignorance grows - by believing in more Delusion.]

 Yet the Sun Itself, The Unchanging, is You! When You look at That Unchanging Existence from the outside, You call It God; and when You look at It from the inside, You call It Yourself.

 35- This is your road - a painful road and drear. I made the stones that never give you rest. But you, My child, must travel here. This is your task. It has no joy nor grace. But it is not meant for any other hand. And in My universe has measured place. Take it! I do not bid you understand. I bid you close your eyes to see My face. From his Poem, 'The Cup'.

   Be still and Know that You are God.

   All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves.

   We have the freedom to give ourselves different directions.

  People began to progress when they kicked the devil out and took the responsibility upon their own shoulders.

  40- This is a most vital point to understand, that inspiration is as much in every person's nature as it was in that of the ancient prophets [mystics]. These prophets were not unique; they were men and women as you or I. They were great Sages. They achieved this super-consciousness state, and you and I can get the same. They were not peculiar people. The very fact that one person ever reached that state, proves that it is possible for every person to do so.

  To have the conviction that nothing that happens is against us, always making self-sacrifice, welcoming hardship.

The Germans were already educating the masses in 1899! In a book some years ago, the writer showed that as workmen's wages were rising, English commerce was declining. A cry was raised that the workmen in England were exorbitant in their demands, and that the Germans worked for less wages. A commission was sent over to Germany to investigate this and it reported that the German labourers received higher wages. Why was it so? Because of the education of the masses.

  'Yes, that was yesterday'.

  Sister Christine. -

 'It often seemed to us that Swamiji was not consistent. For days together he would inveigh passionately against child-marriage, caste, separation of women (purdah), emotionalism in religion, or some other subject, until he made us believe that there was no other point of view. Then quite suddenly, perhaps in answer to a facile acceptance of all that he had said, he would turn and rend those who agreed with him, demolish all his previous contentions, and prove conclusively that the opposite was true. "But, Swamiji," someone said in distress, "you said just the opposite yesterday."

"Yes, that was yesterday," he would reply, if at all. Neither did he try to reconcile the two points of view or make any explanation'.

06 - Swamiji -

    This mighty Current of Spirituality. Each can be in It.  

 There are these mighty Spiritual Giants. They set in motion a tremendous Spiritual Current with their Energies.

    The mind should be made to think of one point in the heart.

  Thoughts do not just happen, there is a certain method in their rise, existence and fall.

  05- Glimpse after glimpse will come from the realm of The Spirit. Then you're finished with all this Yoga!

   Take off Spirituality from human society, what will remain? Nothing but a forest of brutes!

   See my condition; slave of the body, slave of the mind, slave of the world, slave of a good word, slave of a bad word, slave of passion, slave of happiness, slave of misery, slave of life, slave of death, slave of everything!

  When one realises this slavery, then comes the 'Intense Desire to be Free', an Intense Desire comes. 

   The goal is mastery. Freedom from the slavery of thought.

   10- Every selfish action retards our reaching the goal.

  The goal may be distant, but Awake! Arise! Stop not till the goal is reached!

  This is the goal of the Vedanta follower, to attain Freedom while living. They are called 'The Living Free'.

The moments that we really enjoy are when we have forgotten ourselves.

 What you grasp only intellectually may be overthrown by a new argument but what you Realise is yours for ever.

  15- Wherever we can produce a smile, there lurks the chance of a tear.

 The priests representing conservatism, the prophets representing progress.

    The Truth is not reached by external methods nor by reason alone.

Then so can we - 'Just as the farmer breaks the earth to reach the water-course'. [Learn better ways].

  Care not for doctrines and dogmas, develop your Essence of Existence!

20- They feel the presence of the saint in the relic, and it helps them.

 When we have grasped The Truth, Things, which we gave up at first, will take a new shape and form. They will appear to us in a new light, and These Things will now become Deified.

   The world will go on with its happiness and misery through eternity.

 The rich person has no time to think beyond his possessions, his power, his comforts.

  Within the law is bondage, beyond the law is Freedom.

   25- Only after many years can we learn to close down the senses.

  It consists in the accumulated wealth of Spiritual Thought in your brain.

    All the depression in the world is in the senses.

I once had a body, was born, struggled and died. What awful hallucinations! To think that one was cramped into a body, weeping for salvation!

  So the One Soul, the One Existence of the Universe, is reflected on all the fine spray droplets, and so appears to be various.

   30- The Soul is expressing Its own grandeur, working through the mind and body, grasping the external world and understanding it.

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

   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.

 You get the revelation none can take from you - a direct perception of something higher than the body. Therein is the 'Gold of the Mind', not upon the plane of the senses.

   What creed can I follow? What sect can I follow? I am in every sect!

  35- If all of humanity would Realise only a bit of the Truth, then peace would reign, quarrelling and fighting would cease.

     What is it we all seek? Freedom. All the effort and struggle of life is for this Freedom. It is the 'march universal' of all races, of all worlds, of all systems.

Nothing could be more foolish to the Hindu mind than saying, 'Our Father who is in heaven'.

All over the world there have been dancing, jumping, howling sects who spread like an infection.

    A person has much in them that is beyond the senses.

  40- Now, if we all thought alike, we would be like Egyptian mummies in a museum looking vacantly at one another's faces - no more than that!

  All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves.   

  Spirituality is not frothy words, it is to be carried out in this life. It is not running after enjoyments.

  99% of those who attack religion have never analysed their own minds.

                         ----------------------------------------

  The unexamined life is not worth living. Know yourself! Socrates, 470-399BC.

 Solitude is a condition when you can think. Plato, 427-347BC

 Psycho-analysis in 1565! Teresa of Avila, 1515-1582.

'When the will has nothing to work with and love has nothing to love, the Soul does nothing! It has no motivation. Now follows loneliness and dryness with great pain, and negative thoughts that attack most fiercely'. - So grows a confused and conflicted mind.

07 - Swamiji -

      I do not see what you call progress, is other than the multiplication of desires, this longing for more.

  Mark my words. I say it deliberately. Millions in every civilised land are waiting for the message that will save them from driving headlong into the hideous abyss of materialism.

    Infinite dreamers dreaming finite dreams.

      In this stress of our material life, our nerves lose their sensitivity and become hardened.

  5- That cannot be known, knowledge is 'objectifying', knowledge is a limitation.

    The moment you believe, no more can you question!

   Better you take all the old messages and replace them with your own Realisations.

  The Sage asks why you require any motive to work other than the love of Freedom.

   Can salvation ever come from forming societies?

  10- Now comes the question: Can Spirituality really do anything? It can. Can Spirituality really bring bread and clothes? It does. It is always doing so, and it does infinitely more than that; it brings a person to Eternal Life. It has made this person what they are, and it will make this human animal into a God. That is what Spirituality can do.

Why is this discipline so necessary? Because Spirituality is not attained through the ears, nor through the eyes, nor yet through the brain. No scriptures can make us Spiritual. We may study all the books in the world, yet we may not understand a word of Spirituality or of God/Our Soul. We may discuss it all our lives long and yet may not be the better for it. We may be the most intellectual people the world ever saw, and yet we may not reach Our Soul at all.

  The poor man is liberal. The moment we acquire money and power we turn very conservative.

  Huxley has said it and that is enough. [Blindly following!]

When reason tells you that nothing the senses convey to the mind is true.

15- The idea of the many is a creation of the mind - a projection.

It is an inner growth, but not in reasoning, nor in learning.

There is this struggle between animal-man and Spiritual-Man.

We call this 'enjoying'.

We are all making our own beds.

20- Your mistake was to project it outside when all along it was in you.

Stop this whirling mind.

The difference between people is the level of their power of concentration.

  The husband will love the wife the more when he Knows that the wife is God Itself. That mother will love the children more, who thinks that the children are Gods Themselves. 

  This wild goose-chase of the world.

 25- This cannot be understood by the intellect.

  You are the king and you are playing the beggar.

  Vedanta cannot become the religion of India. (Swamiji: India cannot give up materialism and wordly values, the 'King Earth').

   It took me thirty years to learn this science, the little I know.

   There is only One Power, whether manifesting as evil or good. The good and the evil are the same river with the water flowing in opposite directions.

 30-  There is no depression where there is no want.

   I preach nothing but 'Strength!'

      Ignorance sees the many, Knowledge sees the One.

    Every day we run after pleasure, blinded fools that we are.

   35- The mind is Spirit plus space, time, and acts with their results. 

   The mind is not The Soul, because The Soul can neither decay nor degenerate.

     It's reached by direct perception, not by reasoning. [Awakening].

   Your actions show you to be a coward. Stand up and fight!

   [God telling King Arjuna, feigning non-violence, before his great battle].

-------------------  

9C AD, Dattatreya's 'Song of the Free Soul'. Part.

Swamiji is sitting under his favourite 'Meditation Pine' giving a free translation from his Sanskrit book, to those gathered. He's at the Greenacre Conference, Eliot, Maine, USA, August 1894. Emma Thursby's note-taking.

If you know you are bound, then you are bound!

If you Know you are Free, then you are Free!

My mind was never bound by yearnings of this world; for, like the eternal blue sky - I am the Essence of Knowledge, of Existence, of Bliss.

Why do you weep, Brother? Neither death nor disease are for you.

Why do you weep, Brother? Neither depression nor misfortune are for you.

Why do you weep, Brother? Neither change nor death are asserted for you.

You Are Existence Absolute!

I Know what God is! I cannot speak about 'That' to you.

I know not what God is! How can I speak about 'That' to you!?

But do you not see, my Brother, You were 'That'!? You were 'That'!

Why go seeking God here and there? Seek not and 'That' is God!

Be your own Self! - One that cannot be confessed or described -  

One that can be perceived in our Heart of Hearts.

One Beyond All Compare! Beyond Limit! Unchangeable like the blue sky!

Oh! Learn the All Holy One! - Seek for nothing else!

Where changes of nature cannot reach - Thought beyond all thought! Unchangeable! Immovable! Whom all books declare!

Whom all Sages worship - O Holy One! Seek for nothing else!

Beyond Compare! Infinite Oneness! - No comparison is possible.

Water above, water beneath, water on the right, water on the left. No wave on that water, no ripple.

All Silence, All Eternal Bliss.

Such will come to your heart - Seek for nothing else!

You are our father, our mother, our dear friend. You are our friend, our lover, our husband.

You are Our Very Selves!

Some want the delights of the physical world. Some want money, some want religion. Some worship Me because they love Me.

Real love is love for love's sake!

08 -  Swamiji  -

  It is the heart that takes one to the highest plane, not the intellect.

  A person who has a heart gets the 'butter' and the 'buttermilk' is left for the intellectual.

Remember - each thought, word and deed lays up a store for you.

Believe not an old manuscript. Think for yourself!

5- Once you listen to and know your Inner Voice, the whole scene changes.

To pierce through the superstition encrusting the mind, to reach the 'Inner Self'.

No amount of study will give this Knowledge.

Doing things putting others first.

All must attain It one day. And that is one's complete fulfilment.

10- Rapture is when the Divine and the human are One.

Cogitating, constantly thinking of this Knowledge.

Religion - the great milch-cow.

There is no such thing as fate.

All our progress, our knowledge, our vanities, our luxuries, our wealth, will meet that one end – death.

15- Why do we praise the scientist when nature does much more?

It is the carpenters trying to teach the Architect.

What suffering is behind every deed of success in every life.

I am exactly the same as the lowest worm!

They who think lightly that the 'world is beautiful', are either ignorant or indifferent to the sufferings of others.

20- The mind must be made to quieten down.

There were never two religions.

 There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them.

 Even as clouds of various colours come before the sky, remain there for a second and then vanish away, even so, there come before This Soul all these visions: of earths and heavens, of the moon and the Gods, of pleasures and pains; but they all pass away leaving the one infinite, blue, unchangeable sky. The sky never changes; it is the clouds that change.

From this monastery will spring forth ideals which will be the harmony of Knowledge, Love, Yoga and Work. From the monks here, a force will reach and enrich the farthest corners of the world and people will turn a corner in their lives.  - Swamiji, Belur Monastery, 1898.

25- No work, however small, is without meaning. The intelligent person converts every work into work they like. Everything in this world is like a banyan seed which appears as tiny as a mustard seed, yet it has the gigantic banyan tree latent in it. Intelligent indeed is the person who sees this and succeeds in making all work truly great. Swamiji, letter, 11 July 1897.

Public lecturing is killing. At eight o'clock I am to speak on 'Love'. At eight o'clock I do not feel like love!

And thus historically in India, as governors and rulers of their state, women have proved to be far superior to men. John Stuart Mill mentions this fact.

 -------------------

  Quoted by Swamiji. (From 'Light of Asia'. Edwin Arnold, 1832-1904).

18 Dec 1894,  in a New York class.

Buddha says -

You suffer from yourselves.

None else compels.

None other holds you, that you live and die.

And you whirl upon the wheel.

And hug and kiss its spokes of agony,

Its tyres of tears,

Its worthless hub.

           -------------------------

     'A trumpet call to awake'!

      Christine Greenstidel -

”He stood on the platform of the Unitarian Church [Detroit, USA. 24 March 1894] pouring forth glorious truths in a voice unlike any voice one had ever heard before. A voice full of cadences, expressing every emotion, now with a pathos that stirred hitherto unknown depths of tragedy, and just when the pain was becoming unbearable, that same voice would move one to mirth, only to check it in mid-course with the thunder of an earnestness so intense that it left one awed, a trumpet call to awake! One felt that one never knew what music was until one heard that marvellous voice”.

”Much that had seemed of value was cast aside”.

           --------------------------------

Edith Allan reminiscing -

I, in the abundance of my ignorance would tell him, 'I don't think like that Swamiji.' 'Oh, don't you, really?' he replied.

              ---------------------------------

Swamiji was not a vegetarian.

Alice Hansbrough reminiscing -

'I teach meat-eating throughout India'.

He spoke of the raping of low caste Hindu women by the English soldiers. 'If anyone despoiled the Englishman's home,' he said, 'the Englishman would kill him, and rightly so - but the damned Hindu just sits and whines!' He exclaimed. 'Do you think,' he went on, 'that a handful of Englishmen could rule India if we had a militant spirit? I teach meat-eating throughout the length and breadth of India in the hope that we can build a militant spirit.'

              ---------------------------------

Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on this Earth. This is the real message of love. Thich Nhat Hahn, 1926-2022, monk.

              -------------------------------

Neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim, nor Hindu am I.

Not from East, nor West, nor land, nor sea am I.

Not from India, nor China, nor Bulgur, nor Saxon am I.

Not of this world, nor next, nor heaven, nor hell am I.

Placeless am I. Traceless am I.

The body - am I? The Soul - am I? Oh no! -

The Beloved am I! Just merged am I!

The One I proclaim - The One I Know!

Rumi. Possibly not in Rumi's original texts. No less beautiful! Then it has been stuck on by an enthusiastic supporter. Adjusted – JS. Original translation, R.A. Nicholson. Thanks archive.org.

09 – Swamiji.

Every particle of our energy, intellect, spirituality, is influencing others, and they us.

Physics proves the utter nonsense of the senses.

Be strong, clear, stand up, lay the blame on yourself!

Not until we have got rid of the bondage of the nerves can we progress.

5- Each mind is part of the Universal Mind.

Better is silent prayer.

Freed from the bondage of our false selves.

Plunge into this world! Only after suffering and enjoying all that's in it, will renunciation come then followed by calmness.

The Self therefore is a delusion. (Swamiji on Buddha).

10- The Buddha is not a person, he is a Realisation.

 The Self is the same as The Lord. This Self is all there is. 'It' is the only Reality.

        --------------------------------------

 Evelyn Underhill 1875-1941.

'Those advanced seekers assure us of an unspeakable richness beyond the poverty of speech. This vision swallows up the half-baked interpretations of science.'

  BE STILL! BE STILL! AND KNOW!  -

  'For us, smothered in our daily life by the fretful activities of our ”surface-mind“, Reality emerges in our great moments; and seeing ourselves in Its radiance, we Know what We Are'.

 --------------------------------------

 Simone Weil, 1909-1943.