Holy words of Swami Vivekananda - I

He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.

---Vivekananda

The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves. That faith calls out the divinity within. You can do anything. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as a man or a nation loses faith, death comes.

---Vivekananda

Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God, this is the secret of greatness. If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. (III. 190)

---Vivekananda

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin-- to say that you are weak, or others are weak. (II. 308)

---Vivekananda

Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, you will be. If you think yourselves strong, strong you will be (III. 130)

---Vivekananda

Be free; hope for noting from any one. I am sure if you look back upon your lives, you will find that you were always vainly trying to get help from others, which never came. All the help that has come was from within yourselves. (II. 324)

---Vivekananda

Never say, `No'; never say, `I cannot', for you are infinite. Even time and space are as nothing compared with your nature. You can do anything and everything, you are almighty. (II. 300)

---Vivekananda

Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth-sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal. (I. 11)

---Vivekananda

Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow-never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times; and if you fail a thousand times make the attempt once more. (II. 152)

---Vivekananda

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them. (II. 300)

---Vivekananda

If there is one word that you find coming like a bomb from the Upanisads, bursting like a bomb-shell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word, fearlessness. (III. 160)

---Vivekananda

If you look, you will find that I have never quoted anything but the Upanisads. And of the Upanisads, it is only that one idea strength. The quintessence of the Vedas and Vedanta and all lies in that one word. (VIII. 267)

---Vivekananda

Be strong, my young friends, that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words, but I have to say them, for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches. I have gained a little experience. You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. (III. 242)

---Vivekananda

This is the one question I put to every man .... Are you strong? Do you feel strength? - for I know it is truth alone that gives strength. ... Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. (II. 201)

---Vivekananda

This is the great fact: Strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death. (II. 3)

---Vivekananda

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Example of saints

We must cultivate intense yearning for God – the unceasing, uncompromising quest for God that we find in the lives of saints and sages. Sri Caitanya was a great scholar in has younger days. But at the prime of has youth he underwent a sudden conversion and became an ardent lover of God. His love for God was so intense that he could not forget Him even for a second. His whole life was spent in spiritual inebriation. His ecstatic devotion finds its expression in a small poem he wrote in which he says:

          Ah, how I long for the day

          When, in chanting Thy Name, the tears will spill down

          From my eyes, and my throat will refuse to utter

          Its prayers, choking and stammering with ecstasy,

          When all the hairs of my body will stand erect with Joy!

          Ah, how I long for the day

          When an instant’s separation from Thee, O Govinda.

          Will be as a thousand years,

          When my heart burns away with its desire,

          And the world, without Thee, is a heartless void.

          Prostrate at Thy feet let me be, in unwavering devotion

          Neither imploring the embrace of Thine arms

          Nor bewailing the withdrawal of Thy Presence

          Though it tears my soul asunder.

          O Thou, who stealest the hearts of Thy devotees.

          Do with me what Thou wilt –

          For Thou art my heart’s Beloved, Thou and Thou alone.10

          Prahlada was an example of the saints praised in the Puranas. Even from childhood he had intense devotion for Lord Visnu. His demoniacal father tried all In his power to turn the boy to the worldly path. But the young boy braved all the cruel ordeals an went on with his ecstatic praising of the Lord. When the Lord appeared before the boy and asked him what he wanted, he said:

May I think of thee with that strong love which the ignorant cherish for the things of the world, and may that love never cease to abide in my heart. 11

        

My Lord, should thousands of births fall to my lot, may I still always possess an unshakable and unflinching devotion to Thee. 12

          In modern times Sri Ramakrishna stands as an unparalleled example for intensity of yearning for God. His longing for the vision of God in all His aspects was so great that he didn’t sleep for six years. He spent his time day and night in various spiritual moods which were so intense that people thought that he had become mad. His was indeed divine madness. In the book The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna which contains his authentic teachings and conversations, we find the idea of yearning for God stressed very much. Indeed we may say that it was the chief discipline that Sri Ramakrishna prescribed for all aspirants. The following passage is a typical example.

The Master (to Bankim and others): One must have for God the yearning of a child. The child sees nothing but confusion when his mother is away. You may try to cajole him by putting a sweetmeat in his hand; but he will not be fooled. He only says. ‘No, I want to go to my mother.’ One must feel such yearning for God. Ah, what yearning! How restless a child feels for his mother! Nothing can make him forget his mother. He to whom the enjoyment of worldly happiness appears tasteless, he who takes no delight in anything of the world-money, name, creature comforts. Sense pleasure-becomes sincerely grief-stricken for the vision of the Mother and to him alone the Mother comes running, leaving all Her other duties.

Ha, that restlessness is the whole thing. Whatever path you follow, whether you are a Hindu, a Mussalman, a Christan, a Sakta, a Vaisnava, or a Brahmo-the vital point is restlessness. God is our inner Guide. It doesn’t matter if you take a wrong path-only you must he restless for Him. He Himself will put you on the right path.

Besides, there are errors in all paths. Everyone thinks his watch is right; but as a matter of fact, no watch is absolutely right. But that doesn’t hamper one’s work. If a man is restless for God he gains the company of sadhus and as far as possible corrects his own watch with the sadhus’ help ……..

Bankim (to the Master): ‘Sir how can one develop divine Love?’

Master: Through restlessness-the restlessness a child feels for his mother. The child feels bewildered when he is separated from his mother, and weeps longingly for her. A man can weep like that for God he can even see Him.

At the approach of dawn the eastern horizom become red. Then one knows it will soon be sunrise. Likewise, if you see a person restless for God, you can be pretty certain that be hasn’t long to wait for His vision. 13

All the intimate disciples of Sri Ramakrishna had this burning passion for God. Balaram was one among them. His first meeting with Sri Ramakrishna is very revealing.

The day following his arrival in Calcutta, he started for Dakshineswar. There was a great crowd in the temple-garden owing to the presence of Keshab Chandra Sen and his Brahmo followers. Balaram sat in a corner of the Master’s room, and when the party went to cat, Sri Ramakrishna called to him and enquired if he had anything to ask, ‘Sir,’ said Balaram, ‘does God really exist?’ ‘Certainly’, replied the Master. ‘Can anybody realize Him?’ ‘Yes,’ said the Master, ‘He reveals Himself to the devotee who thinks of Him as his nearest and dearest. Because you do not get any response by praying to him once, you must not conclude that he does not exist, ‘But,’ again interrogated Balaram, ‘why can’t I we Him when I peay to Him so much?’ Sri Ramakrishna asked with a smile: Do you really consider Him as dear to your heart as your own children/’ ‘No, Sir,’ said

Balaram after a moment’s pause, ‘I never felt for him so strongly.’ The Master said in an animated voice, ‘Pray to God thinking him as dearer than your own self, Verily, I tell you. He is most attached to His devotees. He cannot but reveal Himself to them. He comes to man before He is sought. There is none more intimate and affectionate than God.’ Balaram got new light from these words. ‘Every word of what he says,’ he thought within himself, ‘is true. Nobody ever spoke to me so forcibly of God.’ 14



Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic

Collected from a compiled book

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Divine discontent

We must rouse a tremendous divine discontent, the discontent the mystics of all ages speak of. Unless we are able to rouse in the soul this divine discontent which can destroy all our attachments to worldly things and desires, we will not be able to get real yearning for spiritual realization. There can never be any real peace in the world, though we must play our part in it as best we can. There must never be any kind of slackness in our striving nor any kind of satisfaction with our state of bondage. Such forms of satisfaction are very dangerous for all spiritual aspirants. We must consciously keep burning the fire of hankering and yearning for the higher life. We must never waste our energies for anything lower. We must never prefer the peace of lethargy to this restlessness for spiritual achievement.

There can be no security unless we have already proceeded very far towards the ultimate goal. Any devotee may come to grief or have a nasty fall at any moment before he has attained to self-realization. So we should never risk to much relying on our own strength before having advanced considerably.

Spiritual practice and prayer must be intensified. Constant prayer, day and night, constant meditation, constant thinking of higher thoughts would do us immense good. The mind of the beginner must be kept constantly busy with divine ideas so as to create the habit. After having created the right habit the path becomes smoother, and there is less strain in the life of the spiritual aspirant.

We must give our whole mind to God, not merely a bit of it. Sri Ramakrishna used to say: ‘If I want to buy a piece of cloth worth one rupee, I will have to pay one rupee and not one paisa less. Otherwise I shall not get it.’ So also in spiritual life, if you don’t pay full attention, you simply don’t get anything. If after practicing meditation perfunctorily for a few months or even years, you find that you have got nothing spiritually, you have nobody else to blame.

What we need is perseverance. There must be steady, regular practice. Let us rather die in the struggle to keep our body and mind pure than give it up. What does it matter even if we die? What matters is that we realize the Truth, that we attain our full stature, our utmost, we will have fulfilled our duty. Then the rest must be left to the Divine, Here true self-surrender and resignation to the Lord have their place.

The man who has intelligence for his charioteer and the well-controlled mind for reins, attains the end of the journey, that supreme abode of the Divine’, says the Katha Upanisad. We should never be contented or satisfied with ourselves and think we have done our best. It may have been our best for the time being, but we should pray to the Divine for greater and greater strength to be able to do more. Today I may be able to lift only ten pounds, but I can ask for the strength to lift a hundred pounds. My capacity can be increased, even if I think I have already done my best and I am doing my best, because this ‘best’ is not a fixed quantity.



Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic

Collected from a compiled book

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The power of reality

It is often very difficult to have yearning for God in the beginning, and the reason is that God does not seem a reality to us. With most of us this body is our soul, and it is for the enjoyment of this body on the material plane-it need not necessarily be a very gross form of enjoyment-that we are most anxious. Religion to most of us is something highly amateurish and a kind of fashion, just like so many other fashions. But if some day, through our spiritual striving. God comes to be a reality, we feel that our whole being responds to that reality and longs for it alone. If the world is real to us, it absorbs our entire attention. If something else is real, that too does the same. That which we take to be real for the time being affects us, stirs up our feelings, draws out our will, it occupies our whole intellect. In fact, our whole being responds to this reality.

If we carefully study our own lives and the lives of saints, we find a great difference. It is the ‘reality’ that affects the minds of both, both, but the reality is something different to the saint from what it is to us ordinary people. To us this world is real; to them the spiritual world alone is real. Their whole life is filled with this one idea: how to realize the Divine, how to make Him a reality instead of an intellectual and vague concept. if we are able to appreciate what the saints call ‘reality’, we can also appreciate why they are ever ready even to lay down their lives for the sake of God-realization.

We should not, however, blindly imitate the saints. They may appear rather unconventional or strange in their behaviour. But, as we have said, all their thirst for God is based on a clear conception of reality. Those of us for whom this sense-bound world alone is real, should be careful in our spiritual struggles. For us success largely depends on the regularity and intensity of our daily spiritual practice. Very often we are so careless in this. Without steady practice nothing can be attained in spiritual life. Spiritual life must be a life of dedication to the Highest, a life of consecration and sacrifice and one-pointed ness. So, we should be more wide-awake and more careful about our own thoughts for our own benefit and fore the benefit of others to whom our thoughts of just, greed or violence are worse than poison-gas. Indeed, the havoc we create by our impure thoughts is far worse than that created by poison-gas. By our impure thoughts we affect people who do not even know impurity. But by our pure thoughts we help others in their struggle after purity.

Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic
Collected from a compiled book

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Strive for the Highest

We all have an opportunity to follow saner and better ways, but we cling to our particular toys and do not let go our hold. So we have to suffer, and we suffer until we learn the great lesson life teaches us again and again, in innumerable ways, and come to act wisely. Just as most people try to achieve their worldly ambitions and ideals, we should strive for spiritual life and illumination, but this most people won’t do. And it depends solely on our own choice whether we take up the worldly life or the spiritual life, whether we lead a life of slavery and fear or that of freedom and fearlessness.

We must strive to achieve something that is higher, that is not subject to change and decay. But we very often choose the path of avidya (ignorance) willfully and deliberately because we cling to our phantoms of physical and emotional enjoyment which, after all, we shall have to give up sooner or later. We all, one day, must let go the hold, and if we do not do this of our own tree will, the toy will be torn away from us, and this will mean great sorrow, and in many cases, a broken heart. For most people this is the only way in which they can be made to learn their lessons, but it is very painful and usually takes many lives. We should try to live a spiritual life, knowingly, consciously, deliberately, in a spirit of dedication and singleness of purpose. This will of ours may be directed towards the higher channels of life or towards the lower ones just as we please.

          If we are able to rouse tremendous enthusiasm in our-selves for the goal to be attained, then only shall we get the necessary energy to strive for it and do our utmost. In the world of the spirit you very often find people with a chaotic brain. They do not care to follow any definite system, and like to drift on the boundless sea of their emotions and impulses. So they attain attain practically nothing, in fact, just as little as the out-and-out worldly-minded people do. No person with a muddled brain can have any success in the world, and much less so in the spiritual world. Settle once for all what you really want. Very often we want to attain peace, but follow a path that can only end in restlessness and trouble. There is a saying in Bengal: There are some people who, when they want to go towards the east, start walking towards the west; and if you ask them why they do so, they reply, “Because I want to go towards the north.”

Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic
Collected from a compiled book

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No lasting satisfaction in the world

Very often when we get a thing, we find that we never really wanted it. We may have been seeking it, but when we get it we may actually find that the desire has vanished, and some other desire has taken its place. Many people mistake the true nature of their yearnings and giver them worldly direction, whereas in reality no human yearning can ever find satisfaction in anything that is not permanent and unchanging, however much people may try to deceive themselves on this point. The old void haunts them again and again and mostly in a more terrible and relentless form than before. People seek happiness outside in external objects, in the physical aspects of men and women. But true happiness lies within ourselves; it is our inalienable heritage. External things can never bring time. We commit the mistake of looking at a certain span of time instead of looking at the whole of our lifetime. Temporary happiness there is, no doubt, in worldly relations, in human love and human affections. But temporary happiness can never mean real happiness, rather it is the opposite of it. True happiness is the intrinsic nature of the inner Self. Let us Have the desire to know our nature, to know our true Self. In Self-realization alone lies real blessedness.

         Even though the higher Self of man is a part of the Divine and is actually inseparable from it, still the devotee gives more importance to God than to his own soul. To him God alone is the repository of all peace and blessedness. We should try to look within and find Him seated within our own hearts. This body of ours is the living temple of God. This is a conception we find stressed again and again in all the scriptures. The best temples of the Divine are, however, the great prophets and seers. That is why they exert the greatest influence. Those who have realized the Truth in their own souls alone can teach others the way to realization. The Lord is always at the back of our minds, at the back of our personality, and only if we can pray with a fervent heart will the prayer be heard, otherwise not. We should never think in terms of worldly understood, is no real index of spiritual life, no proof whatever of spiritual progress or realization. Spiritual happiness is of a different kind, it is the ‘peace of God which passeth all understanding.

          We should not ask God for the things of the world. Suppose He grants them. The material things may bring troubles too. When we approach this great boon-giver we should never ask Him for worldly things connected with personal wishes and desires. We may approach the Lord just for saving our souls from getting drowned in the ocean of worldliness and infatuation for material things. Ordinarily, if we feel unhappy, we would rather adjust ourselves to our unhappiness and cling to our desires and fancies than change our ways and come to Truth and Bliss. We are so body-bound that we stress physical enjoyment more than anything else and are not prepared to renounce it. Rather we go on clinging desperately to its different forms although we get nothing but kicks and blows again and again. Such is the tremendous power of Maya or ignorance.

          The Great Father or the Great Mother is witnessing the children at play. It only when the child gets tired of its toys and childish occupations that the Lord really comes to it and draws it away from the play-land of illusion. Children play with sweets, with dolls, with toy-soldiers, with toy-houses, with toy-cars, and nothing can be done by the Lord until they get tired of these and turn away from them in utter disgust. God takes it as great fun. And then, one day, the child has become a little grown-up and cries, ‘What have I done with my life?, and the Lord says, ‘Yes, what have you done, my child? Who asked you to do it? Who asked you to get hurt and get entangled with your toys? Who did it all?’ And then very often it is already too late, and the child sits in the ruins of its shattered life and wails.



Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic

Collected from a compiled book

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Spiritual aspiration is a rare blessing

In the field of religion also there is a kind of aristocracy. The great saints and sages, the illumined souls in all religions, Form a class by themselves. But unlike worldly aristocrats, these spiritual aristocrats are always witting to share their riches with others. They are only to glad to give to others what they themselves enjoy. But the pity is few people care for the great treasures of spiritual life. Most of the people would rather wallow in the pigsty of the world than enjoy the cosy warmth of the spiritual mansion. You can tale a horse to the water, but you cannot make it drink if it does not want to. So you need not look around to see how many people are following the spiritual path. If and try to fulfil its conditions. If others don’t pay any heed to that call, you cannot do much about them. A parting of ways is inevitable in spiritual life.

Samkaracarya says; ‘A human birth, desire for emancipation, and contact with holy men-these three are very rare and are attained only through the grace of the Lord.” But even these three advantages are not enough. We must be eager to profile by these and must be willing to sacrifice everything for spiritual life. There must be the readiness to undergo any hardship, pay any price, to achieve the supreme goal of life.

We should look upon it as a great fortune that, for some reason or other, our mind possesses an attraction for the higher and eternal things, and should see that we steadily and gradually proceed along the higher path, never flagging till we reach the goal. Our spiritual fervour is to be maintained, but we very often run the risk of becoming slack. Thus spiritual striving stops in most people after they have taken to the spiritual life for a certain time. Their minds are too restless and too outgoing to keep up this spiritual fervour and intensity for a very long time, and to go on steadily and doggedly with their spiritual practice and readings and studies. So we should be on our guard. Dogged tenacity is the one thing needed for spiritual life. All progress can only be had through great steadiness and tenacity, never allowing ourselves to flag or to become lukewarm. Wordsworth says in one of his famous poems, ‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.’ In another ode, he says, ‘The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’ We should not spend all our tine in this state.

Swami Yatiswarananda A monk from Ramakrishna monastic
Collected from a compiled book

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