Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda
Swami VivekanandaBengali: , Shāmi Bibekānondo; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta, was an Indian Hindu monk, a chief disciple of the 19th-century Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He was a major force in the revival of Hinduism in...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth12 January 1863
CountryIndia
Some men, who begin by saying that the world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a heaven when they succeed in the practice of self-control.
No doubt it is an evil to be bound by laws, but it is necessary at the immature stage to be guided by rules; in other words, as the Master used to say that the sapling must be hedged round, and so on.
Mind you, there is no value in learning. You are all mistaken in learning. The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind.
Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God - realisation. Its aim also is Self - realisation.
It is a good discipline to be forced to work for work's sake, even to the length of not being allowed to enjoy the fruits of one's labour....
A sapling must be hedged about for protection, but when it becomes a tree, a hedge would be a hindrance. So there is no need to criticise and condemn the old forms.
Our Soul is a spark of the Divine. It is pure and perfect. Evil deeds merely obstruct our vision of the true nature of our Soul. Through good deeds we can become conscious of this perfection again.
Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really surrender to the will of God? Only the person whose mind has been purified by selfless work.
Try a little harder, and meditation comes. You do not feel the body or anything else. When you come out of it after the hour, you have had the most beautiful rest you ever had in your life. That is the only way you ever give rest to your system. Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as that.
Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. His breath stops, but he is not dead.
The power of meditation gets us everything. If you want to get power over nature, [you can have it through meditation]. It is through the power of meditation all scientific facts are discovered today. They study the subject and forget everything, their own identity and everything, and then the great fact comes like a flash. Some people think that is inspiration. There is no more inspiration than there is expiration; and never was anything got for nothing.
Om is the pointed piece and Dhyâna (meditation) is the friction.
Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as meditation can. The mind goes on jumping even in deepest sleep. Just those few moments in meditation your brain has almost stopped. ... You forget the body. ... You feel such pleasure in it. You become so light. This perfect rest we will get in meditation.
Meditative state is the highest state of existence. So long as there is desire, no real happiness can come. It is only the contemplative, witness-like study of objects that brings to us real enjoyment and happiness. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful. To him who desires nothing, and does not mix himself up with them, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.