The great Vaishnava religion of India has also sprung from a Tamil Pariah – Shathakopa – “who was a dealer in winnowing-fans but was a Yogin all the while”.
Was there ever a sillier thing before in the world than what I saw in Malabar country? The poor Pariah is not allowed to pass through the same street as the high-caste man, but if he changes his name to a hodge-podge English name, it is all right; or to a Mohammedan name, it is all right.
No more materialism, no more this egoism, I must become spiritual.
Superstitions are all materialism, because they are all based on the consciousness of body, body, body. No spirit there. Spirit has no superstitions – it is beyond the vain desires of the body.
The Hindus have to learn a little bit of materialism from the West and teach them a little bit of spirituality.
The idea of God grew side by side with the idea of materialism.
To believe that mind is all, that thought is all is only a higher materialism.
Two attempts have been made in the world to found social life: the one was upon religion, and the other was upon social necessity. The one was founded upon spirituality, the other upon materialism; the one upon transcendentalism, the other upon realism.
We must get out of materialism.
See what an atmosphere of holiness is here the pure air of the Ganga what an assemblage of Sadhus will you find anywhere a place like this!
All the superior religions had their growth between the Ganga and the Euphrates.
Fool indeed is he, who, living on the banks of the Ganga, digs a little well for water. Fool indeed is the man who, coming to a mine of diamonds, begins to search for glass beads.
I have long given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges, as I have not the money.
I reached Ghazipur three days ago. Here I am putting up in the house of Babu Satish Chandra Mukherji, a friend of my early age. The place is very pleasant. Close by flows the Ganga, but bathing there is troublesome, for there is no regular path, and it is hard work wading through sands.
If I ask you to plunge into the Ganga or to jump from the roof of a house, meaning it all for your good, could you do even that without any hesitations Just think of it even now; otherwise don’t rush forward on the spur of the moment to accept me as your Guru.
Paris is the fountain-head of European civilisation, as Gomukhi is of the Ganga.
The vapour becomes snow, then water, then Ganga; but when it is vapour, there is no Ganga, and when it is water, we think of no vapour in it. The idea of creation or change is inseparably connected with will. So long as we perceive this world in motion, we have to conceive will behind it.
The finer the instrument, the greater the power. The mind is much finer and more powerful than the body.
The more power there is, the more bondage, the more fear.
The same power is in every man, the one manifesting more, the other less; the same potentiality is in everyone.