Ignorance and Life

Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, December 20, 1895. Complete Works, 1:52.

Desire and pain

As desire increases, so increases the power of pleasure,
so the power of pain.

From notes discovered among Swami Vivekananda's papers.
He evidently intended to write a book and
jotted down these points for the work.
Complete Works, 5:429.

Universal brotherhood

As soon as you make a sect, you protest against universal brotherhood. Those who really feel universal brotherhood do not talk much, but their very actions speak aloud.

Sayings and Utterances. Complete Works, 5:410.

Laying foundation

My children must plunge into the breach, must renounce the world--then the firm foundation will be laid.

Letter to Dr, Nanjunda Rao. From Switzerland: August 26, 1896. Complete Works, 5.114.

Scriptures in today's India

How many in India truly understand the scriptures nowadays? They have only learnt such words as Brahman, Maya, Prakriti, and so on, and confuse their heads with them. Setting aside the real meaning and purpose of the scriptures, they fight only over the words.

Sayings and Utterances. Complete Works, 5.420.

Love and Reasoning

All desires are but beads of glass. Love of God increases every moment and is ever new, to be known only by feeling it. Love is the easiest of all, it waits for no logic, it is natural. We need no demonstration, no proof. Reasoning is limiting something by our own minds. We throw a net and catch something, and then say that we have demonstrated it, but never, never can we catch God in a net.

Retreat given at the Thousand Island Park, USA. June 24, 1895. Complete Works, 7.10.

Brahman and Maya

The metaphysical and the physical universe are one, and the name of this One is Brahman. The perception of separateness is an error called māyā or avidyā. This is the culmination of knowledge.

From "The East and the West," originally written in Bengali. Complete Works, 5.520.

World and God

Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana all meet in self-abnegation; and that is what the great preachers of ancient times meant, when they taught that God is not the world. There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this distinction is very true.

What they mean by world is selfishness. Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish--and then such a person can be said to be in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world--yet, if this person is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world.

Class on Karma Yoga. New York, January 3, 1896. Complete Works, 1.87.

Personalities and Inspiration

Q: In what sense is Shri Ramakrishna a part of this awakened Hinduism?

Vivekananda: That is not for me to determine. I have never preached personalities. My own life is guided by the enthusiasm of this great soul; but others will decide for themselves how far they share in this attitude. Inspiration is not filtered out to the world through one channel, however good. Each generation should be inspired afresh. Are we not all God?

Interview in the Prabuddha Bharata. September 1898. Complete Works, 5.227.

Scriptures are for one and all

If the scriptures cannot help all people in all conditions at all times, of what use, then, are such scriptures? If the scriptures show the way to only the monk and not to the householder, then what need has a householder for such one-sided scriptures? If the scriptures can only help people when they give up all work and retire into the forests, and cannot show the way of lighting the lamp of hope in the hearts people of the workaday world--in the midst of their daily toil, disease, misery, and poverty, in the despondency of the penitent, in the self-reproach of the downtrodden, in the terror of the battlefield, in lust, anger and pleasure, in the joy of victory, in the darkness of defeat, and finally, in the dreaded night of death--then weak humanity has no need at all of such scriptures, and such scriptures will be no scriptures at all!

Sayings and Utterances. Complete Works, 5.420-21.