"You have not solved the problem of want"
Some California Lectures
Not available on Amazon.
Buy the book.
You have not solved the problem of want
Lectures£16.00
Chapters with paragraph titles
[CW=Swamiji’s Complete Works. 9 vols]
Chap. 1
To turn man-the-animal into Man-the–God.
INDIA’S SHINING MESSAGE.
1901 ca. Found in his papers. (CW – vol 4).
1- Beats the same mighty human heart. 2- The purest who have worked to raise the animal to the divine. 3- Surrounded by the living thoughts of the purest through the centuries. 4- In this ocean of humanity … rose the throne of renunciation. 5– In awe of the unbroken procession of scores of glorious centuries. 6– We have solved the key question long ago. 7– Not by progeny, not by wealth, but by renunciation. 8– She never deviated – whether ruled Turk, Tartar, Mughal or British. 9– Like the gentle dew bringing into bloom the fairest of flowers. 10– A mass of spiritual influence flooded out.
Chap. 2
The Science of Moral and Frugal Living with Meditation.
THE SCIENCE OF YOGA/UNION.
13 April 1900. Recorded by Ida Ansell.
Tucker Hall, Alameda, SF. (CW – vol 7).
1- ‘That’ must be Known here – in my own mind. 2- The object and the instruments are the same thing. 3- They all cling to this Substance. 4- Has a person a Soul or not? 5- Are we just this billowing mind. 6- You have mastered all these changes of the mind. 7- Nature orders us and we obey. 8- Any meaning to life. 9- Their brains are like Swiss cheese! 10- We pay the priests and make a bargain with God. 11- The others are like sheep! 12- The one way out is through ourselves. 13- We have become bodies feeding on the senses. 14- The central idea in this training.
Chap. 3
Infinite Dreamers Dreaming Finite Dreams.
THE PRACTICE OF RELIGION.
The carpenters try to teach the Architect.
18 April 1900.
Tucker Hall, Alameda, SF. (CW – vol 4).
1- Is this world the goal of life? 2- Is enjoyment the goal of life? 3- Kindergarten religion. 4- The carpenters try to teach the Architect. 5- Can this life ever be the goal of the Soul? 6- What is your life? It is that same struggle for Freedom. 7- We are deceived by knowledge. 8- Infinite desire can only be satisfied by Infinite Knowledge. 9- All nature is crying out through every atom for Perfect Freedom. 10- Utilise the things of this world for just one goal. 11- Every machine that saves labour puts more stress on labour. 12- Good balances evil – the sum total is always the same. 13- Greater though is the pleasure of the intellect. 14- Renounce the lower in order to get the higher. 15- These two will never unite. 16- I am the Spirit. 17- Stop this wrong identification. 18- Sit still and meditate upon It. 19- All these objects you see are but dreams. 20- The Spirit must be Realised. 21- Serve the poor, the miserable. 22- Nature grinds all of us. 23- I do not want this sense-life. 24- We call this ‘enjoying’. 25- What is meditation? 26- Stop these thought waves. 27- Permanence is only possible in yourself. Prayers, ceremonies are but kindergartens.
Chap. 4
CONCENTRATION. This one little body with all its delusions is enough!
16 March 1900.
Washington Hall, SF. (CW – vol 4).
1- All knowledge is gained through concentration. 2- This same power is in everyone. 3- Super-consciousness. 4- The purer the mind, the easier it is to control. 5- The first requisite is to be moral. 6– The foundation of life is perfect morality. 7– When the mind grapples with itself. 8– We lose sight of the real meaning. 9– The posture. 10– This is universally true. 11– All breathing and meditating. 12– Concentration – AUMM. 13– This one little body with all its delusions is enough! 14– Meditation. 15– He who has Known God has become God.
Chap. 5
MEDITATION. Stop the Waves.
3 April 1900. Washington Hall, SF. (CW – vol 4).
1- Three stages of meditation. 2- All the senses stop. 3- You and something else. 4- Suppose we can withhold the mind. 5- We are all making our own beds. 6- The power of meditation gets us everything. 7- Intensity of thought. 8- I’m asked, ‘Why do you Indian people not conquer these things?’ 9- All the heaven that ever existed is within me. 10- No man can teach another. 11- Ignorance sees the many, Knowledge sees the One. 12- Meditation consists of this practice, ‘Stop the Waves’. 13- Practise! 14- Meditation comes by imagination. 15- I am ‘God’ – I have no better word for it in English! 16- There is One Soul, the Greatest of All. 17- The same can be had by meditating on a Great Soul or The Harmony of Life. 18- You have had the most beautiful rest. 19- By the power of meditation the energy is released. 20- All the heavens and all the hells are right here. 21- Changing our senses, refining our senses. 22- You perceive nothing but The One Existence.
Chap. 6
I am ‘That’.
NATURE AND MAN.
20 March 1900. Washington Hall, SF. (CW – vol 8).
1- Thoughts do not just happen. 2- There is no such thing as free will. 3- The will is bound by the effects of previous acts. 4- Where Indian thought differs from every other thought. 5- Sensations are nothing but force. 6- Thought force becomes muscular force. 7- I and the lowest pig differ only in degree. 8- Nature is the Ego, name and shape. 9- Man in his True Condition is Spirit, Soul. 10- The question of free will does not arise. 11- In spite of all this bondage, I Am Free! 12- Thus have you and I danced throughout the years. 13- My True Self is beyond all law. 14- The more you are in harmony with ignorance. 15- The eventual triumph, when all this slavery is blown away, is Freedom!
Chap. 7
DIVINE LOVE. Is not your partner God?
12 April 1900. Washington Hall, SF. (CW – vol 6).
1- Love never asks. 2- Love knows no fear. 3- Love is its own end. 4- Is not your partner God, your child God? 5- This is barter and sale – shopkeeping. 6- Work becomes delicious. 7- Things will give you up. 8- How to worship. 9- How we are to love God. 10- My business is with God! 11- My world is this body. 12- Whatever the world does has no influence. 13- To find ‘That’, by Knowing ‘It’, I shall not ask for anything else. 14- This cannot be understood by the intellect. 15- Finding Love, you shall not want anything else. 16- Seek this madness for God! 17- That is the depth of love that must be for God.
Chap. 8
The Oriental. Excerpt.
CHRIST THE MESSENGER.
To Dream a Dream Beyond.
25 December 1899. Payne Hall, LA. (CW – vol 4).
1- Another type – that looked inside, not outside. 2- What makes a race? 3- He is a born dreamer – to dream a dream beyond. 4- The cradle of the human race. 5- In the West, plans of salvation are intellectual gymnastics. 6- No need for text torturing. 7- What Christ says as the only way to salvation. 8- He was nothing but a Soul, just working a body. 9- His one work was to call us to Realise our own Spiritual Image. 10- Better that you never read a book in your life. 11- Give up these superstitious dreams. 12- They become One with us and we become One with Them.
Chap. 9
PAY THE PRIEST AND BE QUIET.
The vast masses are never thinkers.
Gita 1. 26 May 1900. (CW – vol 1)
Dr. Logan’s house, 770 Oak St. SF.
1- The laws of nature. 2- Pay the priest and be quiet! 3- Two ideals: the first in the Vedas. 4- Pay and obey. 5- The second ideal: the Forest Books say the exact opposite. 6- They declare the way out. 7- The same energy becomes joy or sorrow. 8- This way out! 9- The Forest Books condemn all rituals. 10- My conscience says otherwise. 11- The moment you believe, no more can you question. 12- To Know the Truth, the Forest Books say, Renounce. 13- Stop this whirling mind.
Chap. 10
The Highest Expression of Human Thought.
THE SOUL. Monism.
‘There is no God, only that One Infinite Existence’.
2 February 1896. Recorded by J. Goodwin
345 Pouch Mansion, Brooklyn. NY. (CW – vol 2).
1- The fairest flower of any religion the human has produced. 2- I am asked for a comfortable religion! 3- The vast mass of superstition innate in every human. 4- In ‘That Infinite Existence’, we dream all these dreams. 5- The Soul has no gender. 6- There is neither God, … only That One Infinite Existence. 7- You can only reflect your Self. 8- There is but One Soul. 9- The dream of life goes rolling on. 10- He places on the throne The Human Self. 11- I worship myself. 12- This little ‘I’ never existed. 13- Truth never dreams; illusion arises from illusion. 14- The scriptures are but kindergarten maps. 15- And this is the one way to Knowledge. 16- For that person there is eternal peace, for none else, for none else. 17- Therein lies the explanation of all morality. 18- Through the senses as matter. Through the intellect as Souls. Through the Spirit as God. 19- I was born to tell you this! 20- The Dualist and the Half-way Monist. 21- With all dualist theories. 22- What we are now is the result of our past actions. 23- We reap what we have sown. 24- The Half-way Monist. 25- The expansion and contraction of the Soul.
Chap. 10b
Questions & Answers after the
Monism lecture, Brooklyn.
Chap. 11
HOW WE CAME TO DREAM SUCH TRASH!
Get rid of desire.
29 July 1895. (CW – vol 7).
1000 Islands, Wellesley Island, NY State.
Recorded by Ellen Waldo, 11 & 12.
1- The senses cheat you day and night. 2- ‘Das Ding an sich’. 3- Both mind and knowledge are limited. 4- They are all in the veil, in the Ego. 5- Cleanse the mind – this is all of religion. 6– All purifying action deals blows on Delusion. 7- What you want, you create. Get rid of desire. 8- A noble Soul who has crossed the ocean of Delusion. 9- What you Realise is yours forever.
Chap. 12
DO NOT REPENT! Be a nun! Be a monk!
Wear the Flag of Freedom!
1000 Islands. 3 August 1895. (CW – vol 7).
1- With desire comes terrible bondage. 2- Learn to feel yourself in other bodies. 3- Do not repent! 4- We must strive and practise. 5– Intellect ends where spirituality begins. 5- When reducing the Ego’s values. 6- Say, ‘“That” is I. ”That” is I’. 7- Tell the mind this incessantly. 8– We fall into these ‘old, dry wells’. 9- Be still and Know that You are God! 10– Wear the Flag of Freedom!
Chap. 13
BUDDHA, GAUTAMA. 1000 Islands. 1895.
Recorded by Christine Greenstidel.
‘See you not the lion coming along the road?’
Chap. 14
You do not need a Teacher. 1000 Islands
Chap. 15
KNOW YOURSELF.
11 Dec 1895. Beginners’ class.
228 W 39 St. New York. (CW – vol 9).
Recorded by Leon Landsberg.
1- That peculiar reaction called depression. 2- There is no such thing as fate. 3- How to undo the effects of years/lives of past mistakes. 4- Know Yourself – You must know who you are. 5- Dare to be a rationalist. 6- Bound to old superstitions. 7- If reason tells you that nothing the senses convey to the mind is true … … 8- Show that you have something. 9- Detachment is the first step. 10- To turn away from the senses, this takes us towards the Soul.
Chap. 16
MY MASTER.
First Build your Character.
23 Feb 1896. Madison Square Garden, NY.
(Part: CW – vol 4. Part: original MS).
1- Now they thought he was out of his mind. 2- The Soul has no gender. 3- Can the divinity of women ever be cheated? 4-Purity and renunciation – the secret of spirituality. 5- Go out not to seek. The rest will come of itself. 6- To be felt in an infinitely more intense way than the sense-world. 7- How long will you keep the bandage over your eyes? 8- Let renunciation emanate from every pore. 9- The strong, the young, the beautiful – to be servants of humanity. 10- Whoever approaches you will be warmed by the Fire of Your Spirit. 11- Care not for doctrines or dogmas. Develop your ‘Essence of Existence’. 12- Then be you this! 13- Leap into the breach and save the world!
Chap. 16b
The call had come and I answered.
Laura Glenn’s reaction to the lecture ‘My Master’.
Chap. 17
TO THINK DEEPLY.
Superfine Infinite Thought.
How to gauge your growth – better self-assessment.
(CW – vol 4. Among his papers).
Sketch – life of Pahvari Baba. Excerpt. 1- Potent thought will have its glorious day. 2- Tastes of planes higher than the sense-plane. 3- The amount of pure ‘thought-oxygen’ breathed in. 4- Loath to spend time on comforts. 5- That Superfine Infinite Thought. 6- The person must raise themselves to that higher plane. 7- By Knowing ‘That’, I know everything else. 8- The ideal has made us what we are. 9- The ideal gives us courage to work. 10- Whose eagle-glance weighs every detail in the battle array.
Chap. 18
YOU WORSHIP THE DOLLAR.
Faith is not necessary.
21-Jan-1894. (CW – vol 7).
‘It’s weird with a speaker from a 6000 year old civilisation talking to Americans from the 1800s’.
An interview with the Avalanche Newspaper, Memphis, TN.
1- Your Darwins and your Humes were never supported by the church. 2- In the mad rush for gold you forget the spiritual. 3- The Hindu faith has developed the spiritual at the expense of the material. 4- Faith is not necessary.
Chap. 19
YOU HAVE NOT SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF WANT, ONLY MADE IT KEENER.
Questions & Answers, ‘Vedanta Philosophy’, Dane Hall, Harvard University.
Cambridge, MA. 25 March 1896.
(Q&A: CW – vol 5. Lecture: CW – vol 1).
Chap. 20
I have bundled my things and wait for the Great Deliverer.
18 April 1900. (CW – vol 6. Epistle 158).
Letter to Josephine MacLeod while in SF. .
Chap. 21
Swamiji’s spiritual waves flowing from this holy convent, today.
Talk, Youtube. Descriptions of the early New York classes. ‘He showed me a road leading to Limitless Attainment’.
Chap. 22
SWAMIJI’S COMMENTS – a joke he told.
Chap. 23
POEMS BY SWAMIJI.
To my own Soul.
You Fools who neglect The Living God! [Idols are possessions].
No one but me to blame.
Who knows how Mother plays?
The Cup.
To an Early Violet.
To 4th July.
Song of the Renouncer (Song of the Sannyasin = Monk).
Chap. 24 TIME, SPACE AND PROJECTING.
The well-acquired habit of the mind depending on food from the senses.
Sashi/Swami Ramakrishnananda (1863-1911). Fellow monk of Swamiji’s. 1910.
Chap. 25
LIVING IN YOUR FRAGRANCE – I LONG FOR NOTHING.
Chant from the Rig-Veda. 1200BC ca.
The first Veda ‘book’. Earliest Sanskrit. A mantra.
Chap. 26
The Ultimate Sound.
YOU ARE IN THIS FLOW OF ENERGY.
The Shining Word.
That sound which never was, never is, never will be. The Atharvasika Forest Book.
Chap. 27
The Quest – ‘I REMEMBER ONCE …’
What he Realised.
All else is 95% bunk. 1941.
Swami Atulananda. Letter to Ida Ansell.
Chap. 28
THE GREAT ORGANISER – Swamiji’s able assistant in California, Alice Hansbrough, reminiscing on Swamiji. CONSULT YOUR HEART, THEN FOLLOW ITS DICTATES.
1- Impossible to ever give the same lecture twice. 2- If you care to arrange a class I will be glad to address them. 3- I do not need luxury. 4- I have cleared whole halls in New York. 5- What I am is written on my brow. 6- Swamiji, I think you would like me to go to San Francisco? 7- Consult your heart, then follow its dictates. 8- Trust an American minister – never! 9- And my words will burn their way into your brain. 10- Woman’s business is to tempt man. 11- He didn’t believe in punishment. 12- Hinduism from a real Hindu. 13- An attempt to trap Swamiji. 14- The only time I ever saw him angry. 15- But he talks to me all the time. 16- He told her where to get off. 17- He read ‘Song of the Renouncer’. 18- The heathen in his blindness bows down to wood! 19- Were you happily married? 20- When the rules don’t suit me, I change them. 21- Sitting on the floor eating peanuts. 22- I have known all three of you before. 23 The air was supercharged. 24- In a moment I felt I was going to float away.
Chap. 29
IF THIS ISN’T HELL, I DON’T KNOW WHAT IS!
On recording Swamiji lecturing in San Francisco. One feels the power is still there. Ida Ansell (1878-1955). (CW – vol 4).
1– As we left, with Swamiji’s vibrant chanting still ringing in our ears. 2- Startled and astonished at what we heard, amazed. enraptured. 3- So deliciously humorous, an entrancing story teller. 4- It amused him to see someone run for a cable car. 5- But the jokes continued. 6- In India they tell me I ought not to teach Monism to the people at large. 7- The education system is all wrong, first learn to master the mind. 8- My mother could memorise any sacred book she wanted in one reading. 9- He told us in plain and forceful language what he thought of us – and it was not flattering. 10- He stressed the idea of chastity to strengthen the mind. 11- I will say grace to you Madame, you have done all the work. 12- If this isn’t hell, I don’t know what is! 13- If you scold her, I’ll eat all the ice-cream sodas in the place. 14- I am the heathen they came to save. 15- I cannot forego the temptation to go camping under the high Redwood trees in California. 16- There is no force in the universe that can pull against the human heart. 17- Our Master said you could drop meditation for service. 18- I close my eyes and see him in the darkness, standing there with sparks flying from the blazing log fire. 19- The bliss, power and peace of the meditation that followed could never be described. 20- I can see Shanti now, in the pouring rain heedless of getting drenched, spreading an extra canvas over his tent. 21- ‘Silence all teachers! Silence all books! You! Speak only to My Soul’ [Thomas à Kempis]. 22- One would eat poison if offered it by Swamiji. 23- Shanti’s carefree spirit and indifference to conventions pleased Swamiji. 24- You have become part of my life forever. 25- Black man like coffee, white man like coffee, red man like coffee. 26- I am All Existence! Bliss! Knowledge! 27- Go and make half a million dollars for my work in India. 28- ”Hello! Who is this sky pilot?”- 29- Tom Allan: I have met a man who is not a man, he is a God! 30- Good and evil are the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other. 31- Swamiji to Edith Allan, ‘Madame, you come here’. 32- I am the disciple of one whose shoes I am not worthy to loosen. 33- ‘Madame, you come back. Go into the dining room and sit down’. 34- They’re already telling me to finish and I haven’t got started yet! 35- You want to be my disciples. You must face the cannon without a murmur. 36- We are clowns tumbling. 37- Never since that first day has he been out of Edith’s mind – ‘If ever you are in trouble, you can call on me’. 38- To have felt his words of power flow through me, onto paper, into print, for many to read, is a rare privilege.
Chap. 30
Swamiji’s Two Teachers – William Hastie. Swamiji’s BA degree (3 years, 1883-1886) is taught by this wonderful Calvinist missionary at the Scottish Church College, Calcutta (and the other Calvinist teachers). It is through Hastie, Swamiji carries Kant, Schopenhauer, Mill, William Jones, Thomas a Kempis, Aristotle, Plato.
Chap. 31
Ramakrishna, charismatic ascetic, with ‘supreme holiness’ – from William Hastie. ‘Living life is how to cross this ocean of delusion’. Ramakrishna rejects wordly values.
Chap. 32
Mastery vs. More Knowledge. East vs. West. Mind-discipline vs. Reasoning. To understand our set values; how to assess them. To think with clarity every moment.
Chap. 33
Some Renouncers. Rabia, Thich Nhat Hanh, Rumi.
Chap. 34
More Renouncers. The Desert Fathers. Egyptian monastics (men and women) -the earliest Christian mystcis – in rapture and a life rejecting the world.
Chap. 35
More Renouncers:
Teresa of Avila – ‘I won’t have nuns who are ninnies’.
Rapture: The understanding has no part. ‘Fragrant Poverty’.
Florence Nightingale. Life Saver. Inspirational. Consider what she did.
Simone Weil. You have given me the gift of poverty.
Mechthild. Set me on Fire! You cannot burn the Truth! (Her book is threatened).
Chap. 36
Where are the roots? – Long before Sanskrit, another language. Indus Valley. Egypt: Holy word: ”Ma’at”. Means order, duty, morality, conforming.
Chap. 37
The Dead are not Dead! Ancient spirituality. Energies all over! The Shamans. Neutrinos: Billions/sec pass through your fingers. Spiritually charged ??
The Shamans.