Raja-Yoga Quotes

“Was there ever a more horrible blasphemy than the statement that all the knowledge of God is confined to this or that book? How dare men call God infinite, and yet try to compress Him within the covers of a little book!”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“Take Risks in Your Life If u Win, U Can Lead! If u Lose, U Can Guide!”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga

“there is a continuity of mind, as the Yogis call it. The mind is universal. Your mind, my mind, all these little minds, are fragments of that universal mind, little waves in the ocean; and”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“Pranayama. Stopping the right nostril with the thumb, through the left nostril fill in air, according to capacity; then, without any interval, throw the air out through the right nostril, closing the left one. Again inhaling through the right nostril eject through the left, according to capacity; practicing this three or five times at four hours of the day, before dawn, during midday, in the evening, and at midnight, in fifteen days or a month purity of the nerves is attained; then begins Pranayama.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“The next step is Asana, posture. A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day, until certain higher states are reached. Therefore it is quite necessary that we should find a posture in which we can remain long. That posture which is the easiest for one should be the one chosen.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. But, instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use in polishing up the outside when there is no inside? The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were, upon his fellow-beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes; that personality put upon anything will make it work.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“Why is there so much disturbance, so much fighting and quarrelling in the name of God? There has been more bloodshed in the name of God than for any other cause, because people never went to the fountain-head; they were content only to give a mental assent to the customs of their forefathers, and wanted others to do the same. What right has a man to say he has a soul if he does not feel it, or that there is a God if he does not see Him? If there is a God we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of Yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“The idea is, when a man receives a gift from another, his heart becomes impure, he becomes low, he loses his independence, he becomes bound and attached.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“All this bringing of the mind into a higher state of vibration is included in one word in Yoga — Samadhi.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“He who does so, says the Gita, cannot be a Yogi: He who fasts, he who keeps awake, he who sleeps much, he who works too much, he who does no work, none of these can be a Yogi (Gita, VI, 16).”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga By Swami Vivekananda

“Uniformity is the rigorous law of nature; what once happened can happen always.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“The organs or Indriyas together with the mind or Manas, the determinative faculty or Buddhi, and egoism or Ahamkâra, form the group called the Antahkarana or the internal instrument.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“A Yogi must avoid the two extremes of luxury and austerity. He must not fast, or torture his flesh. For, says the Gita, “He who fasts and he who eats too much, he who keeps awake and he who sleeps much, he who works too much and he who does no work, none of these can be Yogis.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“not”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga

“The Sânkhyas and other religionists put intelligence first, and the series becomes intelligence first, and then matter. The scientific man on the other hand puts his finger on matter, and says, matter first, and then intelligence. Yet they both indicate the same chain. Indian philosophy, however, goes beyond both intelligence and matter, and finds a Purusha or Self, which is beyond intelligence, or of which intelligence is but the borrowed light.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“To control our passions we have to control them at their very roots; then alone shall we be able to burn out their very seeds.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“If the object is a good one we shall feel friendly towards it; if the object is one that is miserable we must be merciful towards it. If it is good we must be glad, if it is evil we must be indifferent.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“is the Chitta that is constantly moving and manipulating itself into various forms, and we are thinking that we are those various forms. All such foolish delusions will vanish by the powers of the highest concentration.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“Such waves of the mind should be controlled by me, and not I by them—this sort of mental strength is what is called renunciation or Vairâgyam and that is the only way to freedom”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“may remark here that the idea of a force always completing a circle explains the ethical theory, that you must not hate but love every one. Because, just as in the case of electricity or any other force, the modern theory is that the power leaves the dynamo and completes the circle back to the dynamo, so with all forces in nature; they must come back to the source. Therefore do not hate anybody, because that force of hatred which comes out from you, must, in the long run, come back to you.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life; dream of it, think of it, and live on that alone. Let the brain, the muscles, the nerves and indeed every part of your body be full of that idea, to the exclusion of every other idea. That indeed is the way to success, and that is how the great spiritual giants are produced.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“This, therefore, is the physiological explanation of the breathing exercises, that they tend to bring a rhythmic action in the body, and help us, through the respiratory centre, to control the other centres. And that is what the Yogi aims to do when he speaks of rousing the coiled-up power in the Mulâdhâra, called the Kundalini with the help of Prânâyâma.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“Secondly, we have also to know that, of all the centres, we have particularly to remember three,—the Mulâdhâra or the basic, the Sahasrâra or the thousand-petalled lotus in the brain, and the Manipura or the lotus in the navel.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“According to the Yogis there are two nerve-currents in the spinal column, called Pingalâ and Idâ, and that there is a hollow canal called Sushumnâ running through the entire spinal cord. At the lower end of the hollow canal is what the Yogis call the “Lotus of the Kundalini.” They”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“The human body, again, is the greatest of its kind in the universe, and a human being the greatest being. Man is higher than all the animals and all the angels, so say the Scriptures. None is greater than man, for even the Devas or gods will have to come down again and attain salvation through a human body. For, man alone attains to perfection, and not even the Devas.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“RAJA YOGA is divided into eight steps. The first is Yama; that is to say, the practice of non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence, and non-receiving of anything, even if it be a gift, that is conducive to luxury. The next is Niyama; that it to say, the practice of the virtues of cleanliness, contentment, mortification, study, and self-surrender to God. Then come the steps Asana or posture, Prânâyâma or control of Prâna, Pratyâhâra or making the mind introspective, Dhâranâ or concentration, Dhyâna or meditation, and Samâdhi or super-consciousness.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature

“We see then, in the study of Raja Yoga no faith or belief is necessary. Believe nothing until you find it out for yourself—that is what it teaches us. For, truth requires no prop to make it stand.”
― Vivekananda, Raja Yoga or Conquering the Internal Nature