Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

by Vivekananda

Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep; you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising — not in believing, but in being and becoming.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind, but the object of your study is always your own mind.

If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man.

that maxim fully into practice, the whole social fabric would fall to pieces, the wicked would take possession of our properties and our lives, and would do whatever

To the man who has begun to hate himself the gate to degeneration has already opened; and the same is true of a nation.

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in

ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God. Therefore, ...

So fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.

The great duty of the householder is to earn a living, but he must take care that he does not do it by telling lies, or by cheating, or by robbing others; and he must remember that his life is for the service of God, and the poor.

The householder must always please his wife with money, clothes, love, faith, and words like nectar, and never do anything to disturb her. That man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded in his religion and has all the virtues.

The householder must be pure in heart and clean in body, always active and always ready for work.

He must not be gushing in his friendship; he must not go out of the way making friends everywhere; he must watch the actions of the men he wants to make friends with, and their dealings with other men, reason upon them, and then make friends.

He must struggle to acquire a good name by all means. He must not gamble, he must not move in the company of the wicked, he must not tell lies, and must not be the cause of trouble to others.

The householder by digging tanks, by planting trees on the roadsides, by establishing rest-houses for men and animals, by making roads and building bridges, goes towards the same goal as the greatest Yogi.

Ignorance is death, knowledge is life.

So, that help which tends to make us strong spiritually is the highest, next to it comes intellectual help, and after that physical help.

"The whole of nature is for the soul, not the soul for nature."

That should never and nowhere be the ideal of the householder.

Therefore we see that it is not the thing done that defines a duty. To give an objective definition of duty is thus entirely impossible. Yet there is duty from the subjective side. Any action that makes us go Godward is a good action, and is our duty;

I am not the standard of the universe. I have to accommodate myself to the world, and not the world to me.

No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties, but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them.

Our duty to others means helping others; doing good to the world.

We should always try to help the world, that should be the highest motive in us;

This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures a world for himself.

Life is good or evil according to the state of mind in which we look at it, it is neither by itself. Fire, by itself, is neither good nor evil.

In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also. In doing good we do good to ourselves and to others as well; and, like all other forces in man, these forces of good and evil also gather strength from outside.

the action one has done cannot be destroyed until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results.

Then again, there are people who are foolish in another way: they teach us that all these animals were created for us to kill and eat, and that this universe is for the enjoyment of men.

is a weakness to think that any one is dependent on me, and that I can do good to another. This belief is the mother of all our attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain.

So drive out of your mind the idea that you have to do something for the world; the world does not require any help from you. It is sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think that he is born to help the world; it is simply pride, it is selfishness insinuating itself in the form of virtue.

It is only selfishness that causes the difference between good and evil. It is a very hard thing to understand, but you will come to learn in time that nothing in the universe has power over you until you allow it to exercise such a power.

It is very easy to say that nothing has the right to act upon you until you allow it to do so; but what is the true sign of the man who really does not allow anything to work upon him, who is neither happy nor unhappy when acted upon by the external world? The sign is that good or ill fortune causes no change in his mind: in all conditions he continues to remain the same.

Thus the man that has practiced control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything outside; there is no more slavery for him.

Any work, any action, any thought that produces an effect is called a Karma. Thus the law of Karma means the law of

causation, of inevitable cause and sequence.

What is death? What are terrors? Do you not see the Lord's face in them? Fly from evil and terror and misery, and they will follow you. Face them, and they will flee.

life is all about

The idea is expressed by St. Paul, "The God that ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

Get rid, in the first place, of all these limited ideas and see God in every person — working through all hands, walking through all feet, and eating through every mouth. In every being He lives, through all minds He thinks. He is self-evident, nearer unto us than ourselves.

"Arise ! Awake ! and stop not until the goal is reached."

thou

The mind should be able to control every part of [the body] just at will.

Here [comes] the philosopher to show us the way out, to teach us what we really are.

The system of Râja-Yoga is to utilise these physical helps, to make use of the powers and forces in the body to produce certain mental states, to make the mind stronger and stronger until it regains its lost empire.

If [you think] thought cannot be manufactured, stop eating for twenty days and see how you feel. Begin today and count. ... Even thought is manufactured by food. There is no doubt about it.

What we want to get at is not the breath itself; it is something finer behind the breath.

In this body of ours the breath motion is the "silken thread"; by laying hold of it we grasp the pack thread of the nerve currents, and from these the stout twine of our thoughts, and lastly the rope of Prana, controlling which we reach freedom. (Vide ante.)

I have never seen anyone fly through the air, but the books say so.

This is in the books. I can [hardly] believe them, nor do I disbelieve them. What I have seen I take....

[The thoughts, the senses] should be all my servants, not my masters. Then only is it possible that evils will vanish....