Vividness

“ Sit down and let all things melt away, they are but dreams. There is no differentiation, no distinction, it is all superstition; therefore be silent and know what you are.
"I am the essence of bliss." Follow no ideal, you are all there is. Fear naught, you are the essence of existence. Be at peace. Do not disturb yourself. You never were in bondage, you never were virtuous or sinful. Get rid of all these delusions and be at peace. Whom to worship? Who worships? All is the Atman. To speak, to think is superstition. Repeat over and over, "I am Atman", "I am Atman". ”

“ Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would beg of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with the loss of a hand or an eye. Could you see what a sweet, divine, transforming power there is in humility, how it expels the poison of your nature, and makes room for the Spirit of God to live in you, you would rather wish to be the footstool of all the world than want the smallest degree of it. ”

“ Your study is the manifestation of life, mine is the life itself. My philosophy says you must know that and drive out from your mind all thoughts of heaven and hell and all other superstitions, even though they exist in the same sense that this world exists. I must know the heart of this life, its very essence, what it is, not only how it works and what are its manifestations. ”

“ Life is evanescent, a fleeting dream; youth and beauty fade. Say day and night, "Thou art my father, my mother, my husband, my love, my lord, my God — I want nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee, nothing but Thee. ”

“ All Nature, with one voice—with one glory,—is set to teach you reverence for the life communicated to you from the Father of Spirits. The song of birds, and their plumage; the scent of flowers, their colour, their very existence, are in direct connection with the mystery of that communicated life: and all the strength, and all the arts of men, are measured by, and founded upon, their reverence for the passion, and their guardianship of the purity, of Love. ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ That I call practical religion.
This truth about the soul is first to be heard. If you have heard it, think about it. Once you have done that, meditate upon it. No more vain arguments! Satisfy yourself once that you are the infinite spirit. If that is true, it must be nonsense that you are the body. You are the Self, and that must be realised. Spirit must see itself as spirit. Now the spirit is seeing itself as body. ”

“ And at last come to say, We worship God in his essence, by our thoughts, and reverence the Sun, which is its Image, for the vertue which it hath given it, to produce things here below: only representing by its splendor, which he communicates to all, I know not what appearance, or rather shadow of beatitude and mercy, so much as it is possible for a visible Nature to represent an Intelligible, and a moving to that which is immoveable and stable. ”

“ He is here in the heart of our hearts. Bodies and minds change; misery, happiness, good and evil come and go; days and years roll on; life comes and goes; but He dies not. The same voice, "I am, I am," is eternal, unchangeable. ”

“ There are some sages who, knowing this, turn their eyes inward and find the spirit of all spirits in their own spirit. That is the scope of meditation. Find out the truth about God and about your own soul and thus attain to liberation. ...
You are all running after life, and we find that is foolishness. There is something much higher than life even. This life is inferior, material. Why should I live at all? I am something higher than life. Living is always slavery. We always get mixed up. ”

“ We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life. Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the performance of a great action, which comes out of the heart of nature. ”

“ Sometimes — and generally when I score a success — I feel a despondence; I feel as if everything is vain — as if this life has no meaning, as if it is a waking dream. Love, friendship, religion, virtue, kindness — everything, a momentary state of mind. ”

“ This screen is the mind of man. Behind it is the majesty, the purity, the infinite power of the soul, and as the mind becomes clearer and clearer, purer and purer, more of the majesty of the soul manifests itself. Not that the soul is changing, but the change is in the screen. The soul is the unchangeable One, the immortal, the pure, the ever-blessed One.
So, at last, the theory comes to this. From the highest to the lowest and most wicked man, in the greatest of; human beings and the lowest of crawling worms under our feet, is the soul, pure and perfect, infinite and ever-blessed. ”

“ The fluid soul's upbreathed emotion,
Whose light shines clear as a star apart,—
A fairer light of sweeter fame
Than science knows to praise or blame,
Wherein the soul has open vision,
And feels the glow of His holy flame. ”

“ With no effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. ”

“ But if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the truth that is still taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a humming in his ears. His health and greatness consist in his being the channel through which heaven flows to earth, in short, in the fulness in which an ecstatical state takes place in him. ”

“ Teach yourselves, teach every one his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity. ”

“ As long as the human faculties retain their vigour—as long as the mind is undegraded by selfish interests, and remains faithful to truth, love, once born, lives in an honest heart, diffusing freshness and vigour, even in old age, over the intellect, the feelings, and the whole existence. ”

“ But they whom heaven has either cursed or blessed with minds, over which external circumstances exercise a deeper sway, whose fancies are more vivid, and whose impressions are more acute, require the aid of time to clip the wings of imagination,—to cast a soberer shade over the glowing pictures of hope,—and to teach the art of reducing an ideal standard of felicity and virtue, to one less romantic, but more practical. ”

“ With no strength in the body, no enthusiasm at heart, and no originality in the brain, what will they do -- these lumps of dead matter! By stimulating them I want to bring life into them -- to this I have dedicated my life. ”

“ And added to both these we find the dream vision of the psychic, with the poet's soul of inspiration, sublime ideality and the gentle tender heart, alive with all the common human emotions; and at last, blended and transmuted and made vibrant by that great spiritual insight born on the heights of human revelation we find ourselves whole, grand, developed, humanly divine creatures, walking in glad comradeship with God. ”

“ Vigor of body, of mind, passions, desires, reason, all that goes to make up a human soul, were in the full tide of existence; and I was here surely not to contemplate death, but to fulfil the functions of life—of a new life. ”

“ Why shall we admit that the soul has knowledge, blessedness, existence, as its essence, and has not borrowed them? It may be argued, why not say that the soul's luminosity, the soul's blessedness, the soul's knowledge, are borrowed in the same way as the luminosity of the body is borrowed from the mind? ”

“ The reason lies here, and it must be fully understood. Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really resign himself to the Will of God? Who can utter with power irresistible, like that of a thunderbolt, the name of the Lord? ”

“ Glorious it was — the thought of what is mine —
⁠The counterpart of Nature's boundless whole;
Glorious to feel, though late in life's decline,
⁠'Twas early in the journey of the soul.
Thus did these scenes confirm the Sage's truth,
That nature thus perceived is endless youth. ”

“ All the affinities of things, and instincts of creatures, and human speech and mirth, and household endearment, he will sublimate into abstract Wisdom, Joy, or Love, and sink these abstractions again into some crystal sea of the third heaven, that they may have existence only in their fount and source—the superessential One. ”

“ Our minds can focus the Divine Presence, and we may speak to the world's Creator as intimately as a child would prattle to its mother. Then consider what ought our moral life to be? Not obedience to a conventional category of social maxims, but an expression of the Infinite Mind, and our daily prayer should be, "May my conscious mind perceive that Thy life, Thy thoughts, Thy spirit are within me, and that Thou art seeking to realize Thyself and manifest Thy love through me." ”

“ When I reach that stage shall I know that Âtman, shall I reach the unconscious state and lose my individuality, or will the knowledge remain with me that I know Him? Will there be no one to recognize, no one to feel, no one to love, no one to hate? ”

“ Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad — then pour the soul out at the feet of the Lord, and then will come power, help, and indomitable energy. ”

“ In your meditations, therefore, let your heart grow and expand with ever-broadening love, until, freed from all hatred, and passion, and condemnation, it embraces the whole universe with thoughtful tenderness. ”

“ At such seasons the chords of feeling are lightly touched, as if fanned by the wings of some passing seraph, and they vibrate only to what is calm and holy. Selfishness, prejudice, and passion, have no entrance there; and man is, for a while, what God designed him, a rich-toned instrument thrilled by the slightest influence of heaven. ”

“ Art Thou, as Vinâpâni, [2] learned, wise.
On the flow of Thy current and its force
Humanity is carried as Thou wilt.
The thunder of Thy Voice is borne upon the boom
Of crashing waves, of over-leaping seas;
The sun and moon give utterance to Thy Voice;
Thy conversation, in the gentle breeze
Makes itself heard in truth, in very truth,
True! True! And yet, the while, these gross precepts
Give not the message of the Higher Truth
Known to the knower! ”

“ Strike a match and light comes in a moment. What good will it do you to think all your lives, "Oh, I have done evil, I have made many mistakes"? It requires no ghost to tell us that. Bring in the light and the evil goes in a moment. Build up your character, and manifest your real nature, the Effulgent, the Resplendent, the Ever-Pure, and call It up in everyone that you see. ”

“ So that intense love — that desire — brings out everything. Everything is in ourselves, and the external world and the external worship are the forms, the suggestions that call it out. When they become strong, the Lord within awakens. ”

“ That you have taken service and work so hard for the sake of your wife also shows that the aim is ultimately to attain to that Supreme Bliss of Brahman. Being again and again entangled in the intricate maze of delusion and hard hit by sorrows and afflictions, the eye will turn of itself to one's own real nature, the Inner Self. It is owing to the presence of this desire for bliss in the heart, that man, getting hard shocks one after another, turns his eye inwards—to his own Self. ”

“ Alas, that we should vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense of them seems somehow unattainable—that spiritual touch of soul evoking soul from nature, which should transfigure our dull mood of self into impersonal delight. ”

“ To take up with some philosophical novelty, involving no demand upon the will; to surrender oneself to the pleasures of life; to attach oneself, with superficial and unreflecting devotion, to some form of Church or sect;—how much easier is any one of these refuges of the mind than serious meditation on the great problems of life and the growth of a personal conviction! ”

“ And what could it mean? Can light have any meaning if there is no darkness?
Worship with desire, with attachment, comes first. Commence with the worship of the little, then the greater will come of itself. ”

“ Kill out desire that springs up through thought of self in the body formed of darkness, then violent passion in the formal body woven of the breath. Knowing the Self whose fame is sung in the hymns, who is eternal and formed of bliss, stand in the being of the Eternal. ”

“ When have I known that lightness and vivacity of mind which the divine flow of health, even in calamity, produces in some men, and would produce in me, no doubt—at least, when not soured by misfortune? ”

“ POEMS OF NATURE. TO WALT WHITMAN.
"I loafe and invite my soul."
And what do I feel?
An influx of life from the great central power
That generates beauty from seedling to flower.
"I loafe and invite my soul."
And what do I hear?
Original harmonies piercing the din
Of measureless tragedy, sorrow, and sin.
"I loafe and invite my soul." ”

“ You can change the setting of your mental stage from portentous gloom to sun-lit assurance. You can concentrate your thought upon the useful, [Pg 63] the helpful and the cheerful, ignore the useless and annoying, and make your life a life of hope and joy, of promise and fulfilment. ”