The Messages of Vivekananda

- Swami Vivekananda

My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is; to preach unto  mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.  

Fill the mind with the highest thoughts, hear them day after day, and think  them month after month. The ideal of man is to see God in everything. But if you  cannot see Him in everything, see Him in one thing, in that thing which you like  best, and then see him in another. So on you can go.  

The ultimate goal of all mankind, the aim and end of all religion, is but  one-reunion with God, or, what amounts to the same, with the divinity, which is  every man's true nature.  

Life is the unfoldment and development of a being under circumstances tending  press it down.  

Ye divinities on earth-sinners! It is a sin to call a man so; it is a  standing libel on human nature. Come up, O lions, the delusion that you are  sheep, you are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal; ye are not  matter, ye are not bodies; matter is your servant, not you the servant of  matter.  

It may be that I shall find it good to get outside of my body – to cast it  off like a disused garment. But I shall not cease to work! I shall inspire men  everywhere, until the world shall know that it is one with God.  

I only preach what is good for universal humanity.  

If you have faith in the three hundred and thirty millions of mythological  gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have introduced into your midst, and  still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you. Have faith in  yourselves and stand up on that faith.  

There must be no fear. No begging, but demanding - demanding the Highest. The  true devotees of the Mother are as hard as adamant and as fearless as lions.  They are not the least upset if the whole universe suddenly crumbles into dust  at their feet; Make Her listen to you. None of that cringing to Mother!  Remember, She is all-powerful. She can make heroes even out of stones!  

The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in  themselves. That faith calls out the divinity within. You can do anything. You  fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As  soon as a man or a nation loses faith in himself or itself, death comes. Believe  first in yourself, and then in God.

He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that  he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is  the atheist, who does not believe in himself.  

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest  heresy to think so. If there is any sin, this is the only sin – to say that you  are weak, or others are weak.  

The older I grow, the more everything seems to me lie in manliness. This is  my new Gospel.  

If you look, you will find that I have never quoted anything but the  Upanishads. An of the Upanishads, it is only that one idea, strength. The  quintessence of the Veda and Vedanta and all lies in that word.

India is immortal, if she persists in her search for God.

I do not mean to say that political or social improvements are not necessary,  but what I mean is this, that they are secondary here, and that religion is  primary.

I claim that no destruction of religion is necessary to improve the Hindu  society, and that this state of society exists not on account of religion, but  because religion has not been applied to society as it should have been.  

None can resist her (India) any more; never is she going to sleep any more;  no outward powers can hold her back any more; for the infinite giant is rising  to her feet.  

So long as the millions die in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a  traitor who, having been educated at their expense pays not the least heed to  them!  

So long as even a single dog in my country is without food, my whole religion  would be to feed it.  

Where should you go to seek for God? Are not all the poor, the miserable, the  weak, gods? Why not worship them first? Why go to dig a well on the shores of  the Ganga? Let these people be your God – think of them incessantly – the Lord  will show you the way.  

Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success, and  above all, love.  

Be pure, staunch, and sincere to the backbone, and everything else will be  right. If you have marked anything in the disciples of Shri Ramakrishna, it is  this-they are sincere to the backbone. My task will be done and I shall be quite  content to die, if I can bring and launch one hundred such men all over India.  He, Lord, knows best. The petty attempts of small men should be beneath our  notice. Onward! Upon ages of struggle a character is built. One word of truth  can never be hidden under rubbish, but it will show itself sooner or later.  Truth is indestructible, virtue is indestructible, and purity is indestructible.  

Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions in India  who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny-pray day and night for  them, I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am  no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay no saint. But I am poor, I love the  poor.

The less you read the better. Read the Gita and other good works on the  Vedanta. That is all you need. The present system of education is all wrong. The  mind is crammed with facts before it knows to think. Control of the mind should  be taught first. If I had my education to get over again and had any voice in  the matter, I would learn to master my mind first, and then gather facts if I  wanted them. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can't  concentrate their minds at will.  

Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man. Real  education is that which enables one to stand on one's own legs. The education  that you are receiving now in schools and colleges is only making you a race of  dyspeptics. You are working like machines merely, and living a jellyfish  existence.  

We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of  ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character,  you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library.  

Bring all light into the world. Let light come to everyone; the task will not  be finished till everyone has reached the Lord. Bring light to the poor; and  bring more light to the rich, for they require it more the poor! Bring light to  the ignorant, and more light to the educated, for the vanities of the education  of our time are tremendous! Thus bring light to all and leave the rest unto the  Lord.  

Why is it that our country is the weakest and the most backward of all  countries? Because Shakti is held in dishonor there. Mother (Shri Sarada Debi,  the spiritual consort of Shri Ramakrishna) has been born to revive that  wonderful Shakti in India; and making her the nucleus, once more will Gargis and  Maitreyais be born into the world.  

There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of woman  is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing. Woman must  be in a position to solve their own problems in their own way. No one can or  ought to do this for them. And our Indian are as capable of doing it as any in  the world.  

I know that the race that produced Sita-even if it only dreamt of her-has a  reverence for woman that is unmatched on earth.  

O India! Forget not that the ideal of they womanhood is Sita, Savitri,  Damayanti; forget not that the God thou worshippest is the great Ascetic of  ascetics, the all-renouncing Shankara, the Lord of Uma; forget not that they  marriage, they wealth, they life are not for self-pleasure-are not for they  individual personal happiness; forget not that thou art born as a sacrifice to  the Mother's altar; forget not that they social order is but the reflex of the  Infinite Universal Motherhood; forget not that the lower classes, the ignorant,  the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are they flesh and blood,  they brothers. Thou brave one, be bold, take courage, be proud that thou art an  Indian, and proudly proclaim-'I am an Indian, every Indian, the poor and  destitute Indian is my brother.' Thou, too, clad with but a rag round thy loins  proudly proclaim at the top of thy voice-'The Indian is my brother; the Indian  is my life; India's gods and goddesses are my God; India's society is the cradle  of my infancy, the pleasure-garden of my youth, the sacred heaven-the Varanasi  (Banaras)-of my old age. Say brother-'The soil of India is my highest heaven,  the good of India is my good', and repeat and pray day and night-'O Though Lord  of Gauri! O Thou Mother of the Universe! Vouchsafe manliness unto me! O Thou  Mother of Strength! Take away my weakness, take away my unmanliness and make me  a Man!'

What we need today is to know that there is a God, and that we can see and  feel Him here and now.  

We want everything but God, because our ordinary desires are fulfilled by the  external world. So long as our needs are confined within the limits of the  physical universe, it is only when we have had hard blows in our lives and are  disappointed with everything here that we feel the need for something higher;  then we seek God.  

Religion can be relished. Are you ready? Do you want it? You will get  realization if you do, and then you will be truly religious. Until you have  attained realization, there is no difference between you and atheists. The  atheists are sincere, but the man who says that he believes in religion and  never attempts to realize it is not sincere.  

Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world, just as chemistry  and the other natural sciences deal with the truths of the physical world. Each  soul is a star, and all stars are set in that infinite azure, that eternal sky,  the Lord. There is the root, the reality, the real individuality of each and  all. Religion began with the search after some of these stars that had passed  beyond you horizon, and ended in finding them in God, and ourselves in the same  place.  

Take religion from human society and what will remain? Nothing but a forest  of brutes. Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity; wisdom is the goal of  all life.

Can religion really accomplish anything? It can. It brings to man eternal  life. It has made man what he is and will make of this human animal, a God. That  is what religion can do. The ideal of all religions, all sects, is the same-the  attaining of liberty, the cessation of misery.  

Not a drop will be in the ocean, not a twig in the deepest forest, not a  crumb in the house of the god of wealth, if the Lord is not merciful. Streams  will be in the desert and the beggar will have plenty if He wills it. He seeth  the sparrow's fall. Are these but words or literal, actual life?

These prophets were not unique; they were men as you or I. They were great  Yogis. They had gained this super-consciousness, and you and I can get the same.  They very fact that one man ever reached that state, proves that it is possible  for every man to do so. Not only is it possible, but every man must, eventually,  get to that state, and that is religion.

Religions of the world have become lifeless mockeries. What the world wants  is character. The world is in need fro those whose life is one burning love,  selfless. That love will make every word tell like thunderbolt.  

If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have  no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will  preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on  saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian  or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space fro  development; which in its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms, and  find a place for, every human being, from the lowest groveling savage not far  removed from the brute, to the highest man towering by virtues of his head and  heart almost above humanity, making society stand in awe of him and doubt his  human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for persecution or  intolerance in its polity, which will recognize divinity in every man and woman,  and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to  realize its own true, divine nature.  

What I want to propagate is a religion that will be equally acceptable to all  minds; it must be equally philosophic, equally emotional, equally mystic, and  equally conducive to action. And this combination will be the ideal of the  nearest approach to a universal religion. Would to God that all men were so  constituted that in their minds all these elements of philosophy, mysticism,  emotion, and of work were equally present in full! That is the ideal, my ideal  of a perfect man. Everyone who has only one or two of these elements of  character, I consider "one-sided"; and this world is almost full of such  "one-sided" men, with knowledge of that one road only in which they move; and  anything else is dangerous and horrible to them. To become harmoniously balanced  in all these four directions is my ideal of religion.  

Hindus accept every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedans,  worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrians, and kneeling before the cross  of the Christians, knowing that all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to  the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and  realize the infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and  associations, and each of them marking a stage of progress. We gather all these  flowers and bind them with the twine of love, making a wonderful bouquet of  worship.

Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories, however  beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging;  it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes.

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone  live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.  

Be you holy and, above all, sincere and do not for a moment give up your  trust in the Lord and you will see the light. Whatever is truth will remain for  ever; whatever is not, none can preserve. Whatever others think or do, lower not  your standard of purity, morality, and love of God. No one who loves God need  fear any jugglery. Holiness is the highest and divinest power in earth and in  heaven. "Truth alone triumphs, not untruth. Through truth alone is opened the  way to God." Do not care for a moment who joins hands with you or not, be sure  that you touch the hand of the Lord.

Let there be but a dozen lion-souls in each country, lions who have broken  their own bonds, who have touched the Infinite, whose whole soul is gone to  Brahman, who care neither for wealth, nor power, nor fame, and these will be  enough to shake the world.  

Those who give themselves up to the Lord do more for the world than all the  so-called workers.  

If you seek you own salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of  others that you must seek and even if you have to go to hell in working for  others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own  salvation.

No one ever succeeded in keeping society in good humor and at the same time  did great works. One must work as the dictate comes from within, and then if it  is right and good, society is bound to veer round, perhaps centuries after one  is dead and gone. We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And  until we be ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we  never, never will see the light.  

Those that want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name  and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them  into the sea, and then come to the Lord. This is what all the Masters said and  died.  

Let everybody work out his own vision of this universe, according to his own  ideas. Injure none, deny the position of none; take man where he stands and, if  you can, lend him a helping hand and put him on a higher platform, but do not  injure and do not destroy. All will come to truth in the long run. When all the  desires of the heart will be vanquished, then this very mortal will become  immortal'-then the very man will become God.  

The only true duty is to be unattached and to work as free beings, to give up  all work unto God. All duties are His.

The seeing of many is the great sin of all the world. See all as Self and  lobe all; let all idea of separateness go.  

No work is secular. All work is adoration and worship.

As I grow older I find that I look more and more for greatness in little  things. I want to know what a great man eats and wears, and how he speaks to his  servants. Anyone will be great in a great position. Even the coward will grow  brave in the glare of the footlights. The world looks on! More and more the true  greatness seems to me that of the worm doing its duty silently, steadily, from  moment to moment and hour to hour.  

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it be after his heart. But  the intelligent man is he who can convert every work into one that suits his  taste. No work is petty. Everything in this world is like a banyan-seed, which,  though appearing tiny as a mustard-seed, has yet the gigantic banyan tree latent  within it. He indeed is intelligent who notices this and succeeds in making all  work truly great.  

This world is in chains of superstition. I pity the oppressed, whether man or  woman, and I pity more the oppressors. In this world always take the position of  the giver. Give everything and look for no return. Give love, give help, give  service, and give any little thing you can, but keep out barter. Make on  conditions and none will be imposed. Let us give out of our own bounty, just as  God gives to us. The Lord is the only Giver, all the world are only shopkeepers.  Get His cheque and it must be honored everywhere.

Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the  kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will. To give up the world is to  forget the ego, to know it not al all—living in the body, but not of it. This  rascal ego must be obliterated. Bless men when they revile you. Think how much  good they are doing you; they can only hurt themselves. Go where people hate  you, let them thrash the ego out of you, and you will get nearer to the  Lord.

Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw  all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never  think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no  weakness even in the face of death. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds,  and do not remember your good deeds, be azad. The weak, the fearful, the  ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo, the effect must come, face  it; but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all  deeds to the Lord; give all, both good and bad. Do not keep the good and give  only the bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.

To him who has one thing in the universe the Lord comes.  

'Drinking the cup of desire, the world becomes mad, Day and night never come  together, so desire and the Lord can never come together.  

One idea that I see clear as day-light is that misery is caused by ignorance  and nothing else. Who will give the world light? Sacrifice in the past has been  the law; it will be, alas, for ages to come. The earth's bravest and best will  have to sacrifice themselves for the good of many, for the welfare of all.  Buddhas by the hundred are necessary with eternal love and pity.  

Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! This  world is burning with misery. Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the  sleeping gods awake, till the god within answers to the call. What more is in  life? What greater work? The details come to me as I go. I never make plans.  Plans grow and work themselves. I only say, awake, awake!

I have lost all wish for my salvation. I never wanted earthly enjoyments. I  must see my machine in strong working order, and then knowing sure that I have  put in a lever for the good of humanity, in India at least, which no power can  drive back, I will sleep, without caring what will be next; and may I be born  again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only  God that exist, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls-and above  all my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of  all species, is the special object of my worship.  

It is our privilege to be allowed to be charitable, for only so ca we grow.  The poor man suffers that we may be helped; let the giver kneel down and give  thanks, let the receiver stand up and permit. See the Lord back of every being  and give Him. Hold your money merely as custodian for what is God's. Let name  and fame and money go; they are a terrible bondage. Feel the wonderful  atmosphere of freedom. You are free, free, free! Oh, blessed am I! I am the  Infinite! In my soul I can find no beginning and no end. All is my self. Say  this unceasingly.  

Never think you can make the world better and happier. The bullock in the  oil-mil never reaches the wisp if hay tied in front of him, he only grinds out  the oil. So we chase the will-o'-wisp of happiness that always eludes us and we  only grinds nature's mill, then die merely to begin again. If we could get rid  of evil, we should never catch a glimpse of anything higher; we would be  satisfied and never struggle to get free. When man finds that all search for  happiness in matter is nonsense, then religion begins. All human knowledge is  but a part of religion.

Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you  can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord himself, if you  have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help anyone of His children,  bessed you are; do not think too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that that  privilege was given was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as a  worship. I should see God in the poor, and it is for my salvation that I go and  worship them. The poor and the miserable are for our salvation, so that we may  serve the Lord, coming in the shape of the diseased, coming in the shape of the  lunatic, the leper, and the sinner! Bold are my words, and let me repeat that it  is the greatest privilege in our life that we are allowed to serve the Lord in  all thes shapes. Give up the idea that by ruling over others you can do any good  to them.

The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all  animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I  cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. Each soul is  potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling  nature, either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy-by one or  more or all of these-and be free. This is the whole of religion. Coctrines or  dogmas or rituals or books or temples or forms are but secondary details.  

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody's property; no race, no individual can  lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls. Who can lay any  special claim to it? But ist has to be maid practical, to be made simple (for  the highest truths are always simple), so that it may penertrate every pore of  human society, and become the property of the highest intellects and the  commonest minds, of the man, woman and child at the same time. All these  ratiocinations of logic, all these bundles of metaphysics, all these theologies  and ceremonies may have been good in their own time, but let us try to make  things simpler and bring about the golden days when every man will be a  worshipper, and the Reality in everyman will be the object of worship.  

From highest Brahman to the yonder worm,
And to the very minutest  atom,
Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love;
Friends, offer mind,  soul, body at their feet.
These are His manifold forms before thee,  
Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God?
Who loves all beings, without  distinction,
He indeed is worshipping best his God.

Let us perfect the means; the end will take care of itself. For the world can  be good and pure, only if our lives are good and pure. Therefore, let us purify  ourselves. Let us make ourselves perfect.

When we cease to see evil, the world must end for us since to rid us of that  mistake is its only object. To think there is any imperfection, creates it.  Thoughts of strength and perfection alone can cure it. Do what good you can,  some evil will inhere in it; but do all without regards to personal result, give  up all results to the Lord, then neither good nor evil will affect you. The less  the thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down. It  is attachment, identification, which makes us miserable. That is the secret: To  think that I am the spirit and not the body, and that the whole of this universe  with all its relations, with all its good and all its evil, is but as a series  of paintings-scenes on a canvas-of which I am the witness. He who is alone is  happy. Do good to all, like everyone, but do not love anyone. It is a bondage.,  and bondage brings only misery. Live alone in your mind-that is happiness. To  have nobody to care for and never minding who cares for one is the way to be  free.  

Do not blame any supernatural being, neither be hopeless and despondent, nor  think we are in a place from which we can never escape unless someone comes and  lends us a helping hand. That cannot be, says the Vedanta; we are like  silk-worms. We make the thread out of our won substance and spin the cocoon, and  in course of time, are imprisoned inside. But this is not for ever. In that  cocoon we shall develop spiritual realization, and like the butterfly come out  free.

Truth never comes where lust and fame and free
Of gain reside. No man who  thinks of woman
As his wife can ever perfect be;
Nor he who owns the lest  of things, nor he
Whom anger chains, can ever pass thro' Maya's gates
So  give these up, Sanyasin bold; Say-"Om Tat Sat Om!"

The time was ripe for one to be born, who in one body would have the  brilliant intellect of Shankara and the wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of  Chaitanya; one who would see in every sect the same spirit working, the same  God; one who would see God in every being, one whose heart would weep for the  poor, for the weak, for the outcase, for the downtrodden, for everyone in this  world, inside India or outside India; and at the same time whose grand brilliant  intellect would harmonise all conflicting sects, not only in India but outside  of India, and bring a marvelous harmony, the universal religion of head and  heart into existence.

Through thousands of years of chiseling and modeling, the lives of the great  prophets of yore come down to us; and yet, in my opinion, not one stands so high  in brilliance as that life which I saw with my own eyes, under whose shadow I  have lived, at whose feet I have learnt everything-the life of Ramakrishna  Paramhamsa.

He was a triumphant example, a living realization of the complete conquest of  lust and of desire for money. He was beyond all ideas of either, and such men  are necessary for this century. Such renunciation is necessary in these days  when men have begun to think that they cannot live a month without what they  call their "necessities" and which they are increasing out of all proportion. It  is necessary in a time like this that a man should arise to demonstrate to the  skeptics of the world that there yet breathes a man who does not care a straw  for all the godl or all the fame that is in the universe.  

Once more He has come to help his children. Once more the oppporunity is  giben to rise to fallen India. India can only rise by sitting at the feet of  Shri Ramakrishna. His life and his teachings are to be spread far and wide, are  t be made to penetrate every pore of hindu society. Who will do it? Who are to  take up the flag of Ramakrishna and march for thesalvation of the world? Who are  to stem the tide of degeneration at the sacrifice of name and fame, wealth and  enjoyment-nay of every hope of this or other worlds? A few men have jumped into  the breach, have sacrificed themselves. They area few, we want a few thousands  of such as they, and they will come … Glory unto him on whom falls the Lord's  Choice.

Now in this life let us infinitely spread his lofty character, his sublime  life, his infinite soul. This is the only work-there is nothing else to do.  Wherever his name will reach, the veriest worm will attain divinity, nay he is  actually attaining it … Whoever will be ready to serve him-no, not him but his  children-the poor and the downtrodden, the sinful and the afflicted, down to the  very worm-who will be ready to serve these, in them he will manifest himself.  Through their tongue the Goddess of Learning Herself will speak, and the Divine  Mother-the Embodiment of all power-will enthrone Herself in their hearts.

The Lord is always with me. Follow me, if you will, by being intensely  sincere, perfectly unselfish, and, above all, by being perfectly pure. My  blessings go with you. In this short life, there is no time for the exchange of  compliments. We can compare notes and compliment each other to our heart's  content after the battle is finished. Now do not talk; work, work, work!