Kindle Notes & Highlights
That meditation, like a sharp shearing current, cut through my thoughts and flooded the entire room. The faces of each
Action never smirched them. Nor did inaction taint them with idleness. In one word, they were free men.
“Do not put a printed page between yourself and life.” So
Do not confuse holiness with idiocy.
The way most people act, to know and love God is a scandal. They think he is hungrier than a common beggar at their door, easy to satisfy with a handful of any kind of offering. Oh, no; he cannot be fooled by little sacrifices when desire for earthly results stalk through men’s thoughts and dreams like herds of elephants through a jungle. And do you think you can satisfy God by presenting him with a fraction of your self? He, being infinite, will not accept anything but the infinite in you.”
But Ramakrishna spoke to him with as much regard for his judgment as if he were talking to a sober man.
Ramakrishna, whose throat hurt him every time he spoke, said to them, “Why make such silly proposals? This, here”—meaning himself—“was given up to God once and for all. How can I, or anyone, stoop to withdraw it?”
You and I came to earth as a band of minstrels. Minstrels sing at the door of every house, then depart—no one cares to know their name. We have sung at the doors of the earth! When we depart, they will not know our hidden names….
embodied the phrase of the poet, “That man is fierce with tranquility.” Now I asked him the most vital
he is forever the same. As to a growing child, its mother seems to display different sides of herself year after year, so does the Mother of the Universe to us. When we are spiritually young, God is our helper and sustainer. During our soul’s adolescence we find in him our most intimate friend. In the growth of our spirit, he reveals himself as a symbol of our experience. And at the end we discover that all those faces that we have looked upon are but facets of our own immortal Self.” “How can we find that Self, my
they cannot find God. These prestidigitators
the worship, the Supreme Spirit is recalled from the image to its true sanctuary, the heart of the priest. The real devotee knows the absurdity of worshiping the transcendental Reality with material articles—clothing that which pervades the whole universe and the beyond, putting on a pedestal that which cannot be limited by space, feeding that which is disembodied and incorporeal, singing before that whose glory the music of the spheres tries vainly to proclaim. But, through these rites, the devotee aspires to go ultimately beyond rites and rituals, forms and names, words and praise, and to
...more
