1.

The soul is by its nature pure and perfect, infinite in power and
blessed.

2. Never think there is anything impossible for the soul.

3. He who has realised the Atman becomes the storehouse of great

power.

4. Know the Atman alone and give up all other vain words.

5. PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF THE ATMAN WITH THE

ROAR OF A LION, and impart fearlessness unto all beings by
saying “Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached”.

6. Believe that the soul is immortal, infinite, and all-powerful.

7. The soul has no sex; why should it degrade itself with sex
ideas?
8. These are states, and states must ever change; but the nature of
the soul is bliss, peace, unchanging. We have not to get it, we
have it; only wash away the dross and see it.

9. All knowledge is in the soul.

10. Always talk and hear and reason about this Atman.

11. Atman (is) the aim of all.

12. Freedom is inseparable from the nature of the Atman. This is

ever pure, ever perfect, ever unchangeable. This Atman you
can never know. We can say nothing about the Atman but ‘not
this, not this’.

13. There is no knowledge in nature; all knowledge comes from the

human soul.

14. There is no distinction of sex in the soul.

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

16. Purest soul dispels ignorance, fear and weakness.

17. Everything in the universe is struggling to complete a circle, to return

to its source, to return to its only real source, Atman.
The search for happiness is a struggle to find the balance, to restore the
equilibrium.
Morality is the struggle of the bound will to get free and is the proof that we
have come from perfection.

18. The goal of each soul is freedom, mastery-freedom from the slavery
of matter and thought, mastery of external and internal nature.

19. Speak of this Atman to all.

20. Look not for the truth in any religion; IT IS HERE IN THE
HUMAN SOUL, THE MIRACLE OF ALL
MIRACLES-------------------------- IN THE HUMAN SOUL,
THE EMPORIUM OF ALL KNOWLEDGE, THE MINE
OF ALL EXISTENCE------------------------ seek here.
21. 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 and yet
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 that the ideal.

22. ALL powers and ALL purity and ALL greatness-----------------

EVERY THING IS IN THE SOUL.

23. Even this world, this body and mind are superstitions; WHAT
INFINITE SOULS YOU ARE! And to be tricked by twinkling
stars! It is a shameful condition. YOU ARE DIVINITIES; the
twinkling stars owe their existence to you.

24. ONLY THE FOOLS RUSH AFTER SENSE-ENJOYMENTS.

It is easy to live in the senses. It is easier to run in the old
groove, eating and drinking; 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. LIFE ON THE
PLANE OF THE SPIRIT IS THE ONLY LIFE, LIFE ON
ANY OTHER PLANE IS MERE DEATH; THE WHOLE
OF THIS LIFE CAN BE ONLY DESCRIBED AS A
GYMNASIUM. WE MUST GO BEYOND IT TO ENJOY
REAL LIFE.
25. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS WITHIN US. ALL PERFECTION
IS THERE ALREADY IN THE SOUL.

26. The spirit will triumph in the long run.

27. The spirit is reflected in mind and in everything.

28. Happiness is only found in the Spirit.

29. Spirit speaks unto spirit in silence, and yet in most

unmistakable language.

30. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another
soul.

31. Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the
foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.

32. Man should hunger for one thing alone, the spirit, because spirit
alone exists.
33. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt thou be. Behold! Our ideal is the
spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him we live
for ever.

34. Stand upon the Self, then only can we truly love the world. Take a
very, very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look
with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world. It is but
baby’s play, and we know that, so cannot be disturbed by it. If the
mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame. All
pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent, but
within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon
nothing. It is perfectly free, it is bliss. The more our bliss is within,
the more spiritual we are. The pleasure of the Self is what the world
calls religion.

35. Love all things only through and for the Self.

36. Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the
whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring my self; in
loving another, I am loving myself.

37. Be one with the universe, be one with Him.

38. “Not I, but thou”----------say it, feel it, live it.

39. See God in everything and everywhere.

40. The god in you is the god in all. If you have not known this, you have
known nothing. How can there be difference? It is all one. Every
being is the temple of the most high; if you can see that, good, if
not, spirituality has yet to come to you.

41. If we enjoy everything in the Self, and as the Self, no misery or

reaction will come.

42. Seeing difference is the cause of all misery, and ignorance is the
cause of seeing difference.

43. Happiness belongs to him who knows this oneness, who knows he is
one with this universe.

44. Come out into the universe of light. Everything in the universe is
yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love.

45. Love is simply an expression of this infinite unity.

46. You are one with the universe.

47. We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are
going towards the same goal. The difference between the
weakness and strength is one of degree; the difference between
virtue and vice is one of degree; the difference between heaven
and hell is one of degree; the difference between life and death is
one of degree; all difference in this world are of degree, and not of
kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

48. Good and evil are our slaves, not we theirs. Children finding glass
beads in a mud puddle, that is the good of the world. Look at it with
calm complacency; see good and evil as the same, both are merely
‘God’s play’; enjoy all.

49. There is but one basis of well-being, social, political or

spiritual----------to know that I and my brother are one. This is true for
all countries and all people.

50. All the differentiation in substance is made by name and form.

51. You and I are one.

52. Love makes no distinction between man and man.

53. The highest expression of love is unification.

54. Love binds, love makes for that oneness.

55. Stand up, men and women, in the spirit, dare to believe in the
Truth, dare to practise the Truth! The world requires a few
hundred bold men and women. Practise that boldness which
dares know the truth, which dares show the truth in life, which
does not quake before death, nay, welcomes death, makes a
man know that he is the spirit, that in the whole universe,
nothing can kill him. Then you will be free.

56. The Vedas say the whole world is a mixture of independence

and dependence, of freedom and slavery, but through it all
shines the soul independent, immortal, pure, perfect, holy.
57. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will
come, and everything that is excellent will come when this
sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

58. To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another
soul.

59. You must take off your mind from lust and lucre, must discriminate
always between the real and the unreal--------------must settle down
into the mood of bodiless ness with the brooding thought that you are
not this body, and must always have the realisation that you are the
all-pervading Atman.

60. Turn thy gaze inward, where resides the Paramatman.

61. All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no

individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature
of all souls.

62. The worst lie that you ever tell yourself is that you were born a
sinner or a wicked man. He alone is a sinner who sees a sinner
in another man. Suppose there is a baby here, and you place a
bag of gold on the table. Suppose a robber comes and takes the
gold away. To the baby it is all the same, because there is no
robber inside, there is no robber outside. To sinners and vile
men, there is vileness outside, but not to good men. So the
wicked see this universe as a hell, and the partially good see it
 as heaven, while the perfect beings realize it as God Himself.
Then alone the veils fall from the eyes, and the man, purified
and cleansed, finds his whole vision changed. The bad dreams
that have been torturing him for millions of years, all vanish,
and he who was thinking of himself either as a man, or a god,
or a demon, he who was thinking of himself as living in low
places, in high places, on earth, in heaven, and so on, finds that
he is really omnipresent, that all time is in him, and that he is
not in time; that all the heavens are in him, that he is not in any
heaven, and that all the gods that man ever worshipped are in
him, and that he is not in any one of those gods. He was the
manufacturer of gods and demons, of men and plants, and
animals and stones, and the real nature of man now stands
unfolded to him as being higher than heaven, more perfect than
this universe of ours, more infinite than infinite time, more
omnipresent than omnipresent ether. Thus, alone man
becomes fearless, and becomes free. Then all delusions cease,
all miseries vanish, all fears come to an end for ever. Birth goes
away, and with it death; pains fly, and with them fly away
pleasures; earths vanish, and with them vanish heavens; bodies
vanish, and with them vanishes the mind also. For that man the
whole universe disappears, as it were. This searching, moving,
continuous struggle of forces stops for ever, and that which was
manifesting itself as force and matter, as struggles of nature, as
nature itself, as heavens and earths and plants and animals and
men and angels, and all that becomes transfigured into one
infinite, unbreakable, unchangeable existence, and the knowing
man finds that he is one with that existence. “Even as clouds of
various colours come before the sky, remain there for a second
and then vanish away,” even so before this soul are all these
visions coming, 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. It is a mistake to think that the sky is
changed. It is a mistake to think that we are impure, that we are
limited, that we are separate. The real man is the One Unit
Existence.
----------------------------THE REAL AND THE APPARENT MAN
63. Known, my soul, / you are Divine.

64. Throughout all religious systems and ideals is the same

morality.

65. The nearer we approach God, the more do we begin to see that
all things are in Him.

66. The more a man advances towards oneness, the more ideas of
“I” and “you” subside.

67. Oneness is the secret of everything.

68. We must not look down with contempt on others. All of us are
going towards the same goal. The difference between the
weakness and strength is one of degree; the difference between
virtue and vice is one of degree; the difference between heaven
and hell is one of degree; the difference between life and death is
one of degree; all difference in this world are of degree, and not of
kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
 69. The Vedas cannot show you Brahman, you are That already;
they can only help to take away the veil that hides the truth
from our eyes. The first veil to vanish is ignorance, and when
that is gone, sin goes, next desire ceases, selfishness ends and
all misery disappears. This cessation of ignorance can only
come when I know that God and I are one; in other words,
identify yourself with Atman, not with human limitations.
Disidentify yourself with the body and all will cease. This is
the secret of healing. The universe is a case of
hypnotization; dehypnotize yourself and cease to suffer.

70. The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self
and love all; let all idea of separateness go.

71.Let us take our stand on the one central truth in our religion — the
common heritage of the Hindus, the Buddhists, and Jains alike — the
spirit of man, the Atman of man, the immortal, birthless, all-
pervading, eternal soul of man whose glories the Vedas cannot
themselves express, before whose majesty the universe with its
galaxy upon galaxy of suns and stars and nebulae is as a drop.
Every man or woman, nay, from the highest Devas to the worm that
crawls under our feet, is such a spirit evoluted or involuted. The
difference is not in kind, but in degree.
This infinite power of the spirit, brought to bear upon matter evolves
material development, made to act upon thought evolves intellectuality,
and made to act upon itself makes of man a God.
First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods. "Be and make." Let
this be our motto. Say not man is a sinner. Tell him that he is a God. Even if
there were a devil, it would be our duty to remember God always, and not
the devil.
If the room is dark, the constant feeling and repeating of darkness will not
take it away, but bring in the light. Let us know that all that is negative, all
that is destructive, all that is mere criticism, is bound to pass away; it is
the positive, the affirmative, the constructive that is immortal, that will
remain for ever. Let us say, "We are" and "God is" and "We are God",
"Shivoham, Shivoham", and march on. Not matter but spirit. All that has
name and form is subject to all that has none. This is the eternal truth the
Shrutis preach. Bring in the light; the darkness will vanish of itself. Let the
lion of Vedanta roar; the foxes will fly to their holes. Throw the ideas
broadcast, and let the result take care of itself. Let us put the chemicals
together; the crystallization will take its own course. Bring forth the power
of the spirit, and pour it over the length and breadth of India; and all that is
necessary will come by itself.
Manifest the divinity within you, and everything will be harmoniously
arranged around it. Remember the illustration of Indra and Virochana
in the Vedas; both were taught their divinity. But the Asura,
Virochana, took his body for his God. Indra, being a Deva, understood
that the Atman was meant. You are the children of India. You are the
descendants of the Devas. Matter can never be your God; body can
never be your God.

72.

The experienced is composed of elements and organs, is of the

nature of illumination, action, and inertia, and is for the purpose
of experience and release (of the experiencer).

The experienced, that is nature, is composed of elements and organs — the

elements, gross and fine, which compose the whole of nature, and the organs of
the senses, mind, etc. — and is of the nature of illumination (Sattva), action
(Rajas), and inertia (Tames). What is the purpose of the whole of nature? That
the Purusha may gain experience. The Purusha has, as it were, forgotten its
mighty, godly nature. There is a story that the king of the gods, Indra, once
became a pig, wallowing in mire; he had a she-pig and a lot of baby pigs, and
was very happy. Then some gods saw his plight, and came to him, and told
him, "You are the king of the gods, you have all the gods under your command.
Why are you here?" But Indra said, "Never mind; I am all right here; I do not
care for heaven, while I have this sow and these little pigs." The poor gods
were at their wits' end. After a time they decided to slay all the pigs one after
another. When all were dead, Indra began to weep and mourn. Then the gods
ripped his pig-body open and he came out of it, and began to laugh, when he
realised what a hideous dream he had had — he, the king of the gods, to have
become a pig, and to think that that pig-life was the only life! Not only so, but
to have wanted the whole universe to come into the pig-life! The Purusha,
when it identifies itself with nature, forgets that it is pure and infinite. The
Purusha does not love, it is love itself. It does not exist, it is existence itself.
The Soul does not know, It is knowledge itself. It is a mistake to say the Soul
loves, exists, or knows. Love, existence, and knowledge are not the qualities of
the Purusha, but its essence. When they get reflected upon something, you may
call them the qualities of that something. They are not the qualities but the
essence of the Purusha, the great Atman, the Infinite Being, without birth or
death, established in its own glory. It appears to have become so degenerate
that if you approach to tell it, "You are not a pig," it begins to squeal and bite.

Thus is it with us all in this Mâyâ, this dream world, where it is all misery,
weeping and crying, where a few golden balls are rolled, and the world
scrambles after them. You were never bound by laws, nature never had a bond
for you. That is what the Yogi tells you. Have patience to learn it. And the
Yogi shows how, by junction with nature, and identifying itself with the mind
and the world, the Purusha thinks itself miserable. Then the Yogi goes on to
show you that the way out is through experience. You have to get all this
experience, but finish it quickly. We have placed ourselves in this net, and will
have to get out. We have got ourselves caught in the trap, and we will have to
work out our freedom. So get this experience of husbands, and wives, and
friends, and little loves; you will get through them safely if you never forget
what you really are. Never forget this is only a momentary state, and that we
have to pass through it. Experience is the one great teacher — experience of
pleasure and pain — but know it is only experience. It leads, step by step, to
that state where all things become small, and the Purusha so great that the
whole universe seems as a drop in the ocean and falls off by its own
nothingness. We have to go through different experiences, but let us never
forget the ideal.

73.

For the discriminating, the perception of the mind as Atman

ceases.
Through discrimination the Yogi knows that the Purusha is not mind.
74.THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY

75. It is remarkable also that the possession of India by a foreign power

has always been a turning-point in the history of that power, bringing
to it wealth, prosperity, dominion, and spiritual ideas. While the
Western man tries to measure how much it is possible for him to
possess and to enjoy, the Eastern seems to take the opposite course,
and to measure how little of material possessions he can do with. In
the Vedas we trace the endeavour of that ancient people to find God.
In their search for Him they came upon different strata; beginning
with ancestor worship, they passed on to the worship of Agni, the
fire-god, of Indra, the god of thunder, and of Varuna, the God of
gods. We find the growth of this idea of God, from many gods to one
God, in all religions; its real meaning is that He is the chief of the
tribal gods, who creates the world, rules it, and sees into every heart;
the stages of growth lead up from a multiplicity of gods to
monotheism. This anthropomorphic conception, however, did not
satisfy the Hindus, it was too human for them who were seeking the
Divine. Therefore they finally gave up searching for God in the outer
world of sense and matter, and turned their attention to the inner
world. Is there an inner world? And what is it? It is Âtman. It is the
Self, it is the only thing an individual can be sure of. If he knows
himself, he can know the universe, and not otherwise. The same
question was asked in the beginning of time, even in the Rig-Veda,
in another form: "Who or what existed from the beginning?" That
question was gradually solved by the Vedanta philosophy. The
Atman existed. That is to say, what we call the Absolute, the
Universal Soul, the Self, is the force by which from the beginning all
things have been and are and will be manifested.

While the Vedanta philosophers solved that question, they at the

same time discovered the basis of ethics. Though all religions have
taught ethical precepts, such as, "Do not kill, do not injure; love your
neighbour as yourself," etc., yet none of these has given the reason.
Why should I not injure my neighbour? To this question there was
no satisfactory or conclusive answer forthcoming, until it was
evolved by the metaphysical speculations of the Hindus who could
not rest satisfied with mere dogmas. So the Hindus say that this
Atman is absolute and all-pervading, therefore infinite. There cannot
 be two infinites, for they would limit each other and would become
finite. Also each individual soul is a part and parcel of that Universal
Soul, which is infinite. Therefore in injuring his neighbour, the
individual actually injures himself. This is the basic metaphysical
truth underlying all ethical codes. It is too often believed that a
person in his progress towards perfection passes from error to truth;
that when he passes on from one thought to another, he must
necessarily reject the first. But no error can lead to truth. The soul
passing through its different stages goes from truth to truth, and each
stage is true; it goes from lower truth to higher truth. This point may
be illustrated in the following way. A man is journeying towards the
sun and takes a photograph at each step. How different would be the
first photograph from the second and still more from the third or the
last, when he reaches the real sun! But all these, though differing so
widely from each other, are true, only they are made to appear
different by the changing conditions of time and space. It is the
recognition of this truth, which has enabled the Hindus to perceive
the universal truth of all religions, from the lowest to the highest; it
has made of them the only people who never had religious
persecutions. The shrine of a Mohammedan saint which is at the
present day neglected and forgotten by Mohammedans, is
worshipped by Hindus! Many instances may be quoted, illustrating
the same spirit of tolerance.

76. I am Spirit, unborn and undecaying; never was I born and never do I
die; I am the Infinite, the Omnipresent, the
Omniscient............................

78.However we may receive blows, and however

knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is
never injured. We are that Infinite.
79.This Atman is not to be attained by one who is
weak.

80.This Atman is not to be reached by too much talk, no,

not even by the highest intellect, no, not even by the
study of Vedas themselves.

81.All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the

lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have
any reality, can be nothing else, because there is
nothing else.

82.The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation

(Dhyâna). In meditation we divest ourselves of all
material conditions and feel our divine nature. We
do not depend upon any external help in
meditation. The touch of the soul can paint the
brightest colour even in the dingiest places;
it can cast a fragrance over the vilest thing;
it can make the wicked divine — and all
enmity, all selfishness is effaced. The less
the thought of the body, the better. For it is
the body that drags us down. It is attachment,
identification, which makes us miserable. That is
the secret: To think that I am the spirit and not
the body, and that the whole of this universe with
 all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is
but as a series of paintings — scenes on a canvas
— of which I am the witness.

83. However we may receive blows, and however

knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and
is never injured. We are that Infinite.

84. The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and
everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or
pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it
lends its light to everything.

85.So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword
cannot pierce — him the fire cannot burn — him the water
cannot melt — him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that
every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but
whose centre is located in the body, and that death means the
change of this centre from body to body. Nor is the soul bound
by the conditions of matter. In its very essence it is free,
unbounded, holy, pure, and perfect. But somehow or other it
finds itself tied down to matter, and thinks of itself as matter.

86.Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the
differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give
up the identification with the body, and stand up!
87.The Soul is not composed of any materials. It is unity
indivisible. Therefore it must be indestructible.

88. Q. — Can a man attain Mukti by image-worship?

A. — Image-worship cannot directly give Mukti; it may be an
indirect cause, a help on the way. Image-worship should not be
condemned, for, with many, it prepares the mind for the realisation
of the Advaita which alone makes man perfect.

89.Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats
and dogs, are they human beings? The worthy are those
who, even when agitated by the sharp interaction of
pleasure and pain, are discriminating and, knowing them to
be of an evanescent nature, become passionately devoted to
the Atman. This is all the difference between human beings
and animals.

90.The human soul has sojourned in lower and higher forms,

migrating from one to another according to the samskaras or
impressions, but it is only in the highest form as a human being
that it attains to freedom.

91.The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and
everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain,
heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its
light to everything.

92.Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor

come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but
 the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It
is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.

93.That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the

nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind
gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-
restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world
and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the
glory of the Atman and becomes great.