Ideas of Swami Vivekananda

1. You cannot believe in God unless you believe in yourself.

2. To define God is -grinding the already ground; for He is the only being we know.

3. "Did Buddha teach that the many was real and the ego unreal, while Hinduism regards the One as the real, and the many as unreal?" the Swami was asked. "Yes," answered the Swami. "And what Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and I have added to this is, that the Many and the One are the same Reality, perceived by the same mind at different times and in different attitudes.

4. The message of India is always, "Not the Soul for nature, but nature for the Soul."

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

6. "Oh, how calm would be the work of one who really understood the divinity of man! For such, there is nothing to do, save open men's eyes. All the rest does itself."

7. Social life in the West is like a peal of laughter; but underneath, it is all a wail. It ends in a sob. The fun and frivolity are all on the surface: really it is full of tragic intensity. Now here(in India), it is sad and gloomy on the outside, but underneath are carelessness and merriment.

We have a theory that the universe is God's manifestation of Himself just for fun, that the Incarnations came and lived here "just for fun". Play, it was all play. Why was Christ crucified? It was mere play. And so of life. Just play with the Lord. Say, "It is all play, it is all play." Do you do anything?

8. Answering the remark of a disciple who felt that it would be better for her to come back to this life again and again and help the causes that were of interest to her instead of striving for personal salvation with a deep longing to get out of life, the Swami retorted quickly:"Thats because you cannot overcome the idea of progress. But things do not grow better. They remain as they are; and we grow better by the changes we make in them."

9. "Worship the Terrible! Worship Death! All else is vain. All struggle is vain. That is the last lesson. Yet this is not the cowards love of death, not the love of the weak or the suicide. It is the welcome of the strong man who has sounded everything to its depths and knows that there is no other alternative."

10. You may always say that the image is God. The error you have to avoid is to think God is the image.

11. "Love is always a manifestation of bliss. The least shadow of pain falling upon it is always a sign of physicality and selfishness."

12. Consciousness is a mere film between two oceans, the subconscious and the superconcious.

13. We worshipo neither pain nor pleasure. We seek through either to come at that which transcends them both.

14. That is the one great first step - the real desire for the ideal. Everything comes easy after that. That the Indian mind found out; there, in India, men go to any length to find truth. But here in the West, the difficulty is that everything is made so easy. It is not truth, but developement, that is the great aim. The struggle is the great lesson. Mind you, the great benefit in this life is struggle. It is through that we pass. If there is any road to Heaven, it is through Hell. Through Hell to Heaven is always the way. When the soul has wrestled with circumstance and has met death, a thousand times death on the way, but nothing daunted has struggled forward again and again- then the soul comes out as a giant and laughs at the ideal he has been struggling for, because he finds how much greater is he than the ideal. I am the end, My own Self, and nothing else, for what is there to compare to my own Self. Can a bag of gold be the ideal of my Soul? Certainly not! My Soul is the highest ideal that I can have. Realizing my own real nature is the one goal of my life. 5-252

15. Fortune is like a flirt; she cares not for him who wants her, but she is at the feet of him who does not care for her. Money comes and showers itself upon one who does not care for it; so does fame come in abundance until it is a trouble and a burden. They always come to the Master. The slave never gets anything. The Master is he who can live in spite of them, whose life does not depend upon the little, foolish things of the world. Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else. 5-251-2

16. Knowledge means freedom from the errors which ignorance leads to...Men are not bold enough to speak out broad truths, for fear of losing the respect of the people...This attempt at compromise proceeds from arrant downright cowardice. Be bold! My children should be brave, above all. Not the least compromise on any account. Preach the highest truths broadcast. Do not fear losing your respect or causing unhappy friction. Rest assured that if you serve truth in spite of temptations to forsake it, you will attain to a heavenly strength in the face of which men will quail to speak before you things which you do not believe to be true. People will be convinced of what you will say to them if you can strictly serve truth for fourteen years continually, without swerving from it. Thus you will confer the greatest blessing on the masses, unshackle their bondages, and uplift the whole nation. 5-264-5

17. Religion is realising, and I shall call you a worshipper of God when you have become able to realise the Idea. Before that is the spelling of words and no more, It is this power of realization that makes religion; no amount of doctrines or philosophies, or ethical books, that you may have stuffed into your brain, will matter much - only what you are and what you have realised. 5;266

18. The Personal God is the same Absolute looked at through the haze of Maya. When we approach Him with the five senses, we can see Him only as the Personal God. The idea is that the Self cannot be objectified. How can the Knower know Itself? But it can cast a shadow, as it were, if that can be called objectification. So the highest form of that shadow, that attempt at objectifying Itself, is the Personal God. The Self is the eternal subject, and we are struggling all the time to objectify that Self. And out of that struggle has come this phenomenal universe and what we call matter, and so on. But these are very weak attempts, and the highest objectification of the Self possible to us is the Personal God. This objectification is an attempt to reveal our own nature. According to the Sankya, nature is showing all these experiences to the soul, and when it has got real experience it will know its own nature. According to the Advaita Vedantist, the soul is struggling to reveal itself. After long struggle it finds that the subject must always remain the subject; and then begins non-attachment, and it becomes free.

19.Some imaginations help to break the bondage of the rest. Thew whole universe is imagination, but one set of imaginations will cure another set. Those that tell us that there is sin and sorrow and death in the world are terrible. But the other set- thou art holy, there is God, there is no pain- these are good, and help to break the bondage of the others. The highest imagination that can break all the links of the chain is that of the Pesonal God.

20.If a man uses all his mental energy in seeking to satisfy his body and its wants, show me the difference between him and the animal.

21. ...but what these modern philosophers want to tell you is to take these comfortable ideas and put the stamp of religion on them. Such a doctrine is dangerous. Death lies in the senses.

22. In criticising another, we always foolishly take one especially brilliant point as the whole of our life and compare that with the dark ones in the life of another. Thus we make mistakes in judging individuals.

23.The gift of spirituality and spiritual knowledge is the highest, for it saves from many and many a birth; the next is secular knowledge, as it opens the eyes of human beings towards the spiritual knowledge; the next the saving of life; and the fourth is the gift of food.

24. Anyone and everyone cannot be an Acharya (teacher of mankind); but many may become Mukta (liberated). The whole world seems like a dream to the liberated, but the Acharya has to take up his stand between the two states. He must have the knowledge that the world is true, or else why should he teach? Again if he has not realised the world as a dream, then he is no better than an ordinary man, and what could he then teach? ... an Acharya knows the world as a dream and yet has to remain in it and work. It is not possible for everyone to become an Acharya... He is very capable of feeling intense joy and intense suffering.

25.I accept all the religions that were in the past and worship with them all; I worship God with every one of them, in whatever form they worship Him, and I shall keep my heart open for all the religions that may come in the future.

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