There is only one sin and it is: weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game.
There is to be found in every religion the manifestation of the struggle toward freedom. It is the groundwork of all morality, of unselfishness, which means getting rid of the idea that human beings are the same as this little body.
Think always: I am ever-pure, ever-knowing, and ever-free. How can I do anything evil? Can I ever be befooled like ordinary people with the insignificant charms of lust and wealth? Strengthen the mind with such thoughts. This will surely bring real good.
Think day and night, I am of the essence of that Supreme Existence, Knowledge, Bliss-what fear and anxiety have I? This body, mind, and intellect are all transient, and That which is beyond these is myself.
This earth is higher than all the heavens; this is the greatest school in the universe.
Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.
We cannot see outside what we are not inside. The universe is to us what the huge engine is to the miniature engine; and indication of any error in the tiny engine leads us to imagine trouble in the huge one.
We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.
We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we are ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the Light.
We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.
What do you gain in heaven? You become gods, drink nectar, and get rheumatism. There is less misery there than on earth, but also less truth.
What is material and what is not? When the world is the end and God is the means to attain that end, that is material. When God is the end and the world is only the means to attain that end, spirituality has begun.
What is the use of talking of one’s mistakes to the world? They cannot thereby be undone. For what one has done one must suffer; one must try and do better. The world sympathizes only with the strong and the powerful.
What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?
Whatever you believe, that you will be. If you believe yourselves to be sages, sages you will be tomorrow. There is nothing to obstruct you.
When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.
Where God is, there is no other. Where world is, there is no God. These two will never unite. Like light and darkness.
Who will bring light to the poor? Who will travel from door to door bringing education to them? Let these people be your God-think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly. The Lord will show you the way.
A man could be in a throne and have no attachment at all; another one could be in rags and have many attachments.
Two things control man’s character; Strength and Pity.