Practical Vedanta Quotes

“Can infinity have parts? What is meant by parts of infinity? If you reason it out, you will find that it is impossible. Infinity cannot be divided, it always remains infinite. If it could be divided, each part would be infinite. And there cannot be two infinites. Suppose there were, one would limit the other, and both would be finite. Infinity can only be one, undivided. Thus the conclusion will be reached that the infinite is one and not many, and that one Infinite Soul is reflecting itself through thousands and thousands of mirrors, appearing as so many different souls. It is the same Infinite Soul, which is the background of the universe, that we call God. The same Infinite Soul also is the background of the human mind which we call the human soul.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“We have always heard it preached, „Love one another“. What for? That doctrine was peached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“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.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“„Love one another“. What for? That doctrine was preached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“When you read intellectual books, you think when you have mastered them, “Bless the Lord that I am out of them”, because the intellect is blind and cannot move of itself, it has neither hands nor feet. It is feeling that works, that moves with speed infinitely superior to that of electricity or anything else. Do you feel? — that is the question. If you do, you will see the Lord: It is the feeling that you have today that will be intensified, deified, raised to the highest platform, until it feels everything, the oneness in everything, till it feels God in itself and in others.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Give up all these mad pursuits, and then play your part in the universe, as an actor on the stage.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Be free; hope for nothing from anyone. 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.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“knowledge of our real nature, we are beggars, jostled about by every force in nature; and made slaves of by everything in nature; we”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“beggars, jostled about by every force in nature;”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“So long as we have no knowledge of our real nature, we are beggars,”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The one is free and the other is bound. The actor knows his beggary is not true, but that he has assumed it for play,”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Be free, and then have any number of personalities you like. Then we will play like the actor who comes upon the stage and plays”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Love cannot come through fear, its basis is freedom.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The Vedanta says, there is nothing that is not God.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“when a man is pure such a light will shine in his eyes, and that light belongs really to the Soul within, which is everywhere. It is the same light which shines in the planets, in the stars, and suns.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The theme of the Vedanta is to see the Lord in everything, to see things in their real nature, not as they appear to be.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Therefore in all our actions we have to judge whether it is making for diversity or for oneness.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Only know it. Never think there is anything impossible for the soul.”
― Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“If you do not feel for others, you may be the most intellectual giant ever born, but you will be nothing; you are but dry intellect, and you will remain so. [...] Do you not know from the history of the world where the power of the prophets lay? Where was it? In the intellect? Did any of them write a fine book on philosophy, on the most intricate ratiocinations of logic? Not one of them. [...] Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; [...] It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God. Intellect is like limbs without the power of locomotion. It is only when feeling enters and gives them motion that they move and work on others. [...] It is one of the most practical things in Vedantic morality, for it is the teaching of the Vedanta that you are all prophets, and all must be prophets. The book is not the proof of your conduct, but you are the proof of the book. How do you know that a book teaches truth? Because you are truth and feel it. [...] Your godhead is the proof of God Himself. If you are not a prophet, there never has been anything true of God. If you are not God, there never was any God, and never will be.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Thou art That". This is the essence of Vedanta; after all its ramifications and intellectual gymnastics, you know the human soul to be pure and omniscient, you see that such superstitions as birth and death would be entire nonsense when spoken of in connection with the soul. The soul was never born and will never die, and all these ideas that we are going to die and are afraid to die are mere superstitions. [...] The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. As certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The watchword of all well-being, of all moral good is not "I" but "thou". Who cares whether there is a heaven or a hell, who cares if there is a soul or not, who cares if there is an unchangeable or not? Here is the world, and it is full of misery. Go out into it [...] and struggle to lessen it or die in the attempt. Forget yourselves; this is the first lesson to be learnt, whether you are a theist or an atheist, whether you are an agnostic or a Vedantist, a Christian or a Mohammedan. The one lesson obvious to all is the destruction of the little self and the building up of the Real Self.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Perfection is not to be attained, it is already within us. Immortality and bliss are not to be acquired, we possess them already; they have been ours all the time. If you dare declare that you are free, free you are this moment. If you say you are bound, bound you will remain.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The whole is the Absolute; but within it every particle is in a constant state of flux and change. It is unchangeable and changeable at the same time, Impersonal and Personal in one. The Personal God and all that exists in the universe are the same Impersonal Being seen through our minds. When we shall be rid of our minds, our little personalities, we shall become one with It. This is what is meant by "Thou art That". For we must know our true nature, the Absolute. The finite, manifested man forgets his source and thinks himself to be entirely separate. We, as personalised, differentiated beings, forget our reality, and the teaching of monism is not that we shall give up these differentiations, but we must learn to understand what they are.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“First let us clearly understand the position of monism: As manifested beings we appear to be separate, but our reality is one, and the less we think of ourselves as separate from that One, the better for us. The more we think of ourselves as separate from the Whole, the more miserable we become. From this monistic principle we get at the basis of ethics, and I venture to say that we cannot get any ethics from anywhere else.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“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. ❑”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“There are two worlds, the microcosm, and the macrocosm, the internal and the external. We get truth from both of these by means of experience. The truth gathered from internal experience is psychology, metaphysics, and religion; from external experience, the physical sciences. Now a perfect truth should be in harmony with experiences in both these worlds. The microcosm must bear testimony to the macrocosm, and the macrocosm to the microcosm; physical truth must have its counterpart in the internal world, and the internal world must have its verification outside.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“Now, we know that the universal Soul is infinite. How can infinity have parts? How can it be broken up, divided? It may be very poetic to say that I am a spark of the Infinite, but it is absurd to the thinking mind. What is meant by dividing Infinity? Is it something material that you can part or separate it into pieces? Infinite can never be divided. If that were possible, it would be no more Infinite. What is the conclusion then? The answer is, that Soul which is the universal is you; you are not a part but the whole of It. You are the whole of God. Then what are all these varieties? We find so many millions of individual souls. What are they? If the sun reflects upon millions of globules of water, in each globule is the form, the perfect image of the sun; but they are only images, and the real sun is only one. So this apparent soul that is in every one of us is only the image of God, nothing beyond that. The real Being who is behind, is that one God. We are all one there. As Self, there is only one in the universe. It is in me and you, and is only one; and that one Self has been reflected in all these various bodies as various different selves. But we do not know this; we think we are separate from each other and separate from Him. And so long as we think this, misery will be in the world. This is hallucination.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta

“We have always heard it preached, „Love one another“. What for? That doctrine was preached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Practical Vedanta