Great Throughts Treasury

"There is no greater victory in the life of a human being than victory over the mind. He who has controlled the gusts of passion that arise within him and the violent actions that proceed therefrom is the real hero."

"All spiritual disciplined are done with a view to still the mind. The perfectly still mind is universal spirit."

"Friend, Ramdas cannot prove to you by mere arguments the existence of God, nobody can. Ramdas from his own experience can boldly assert that there is God. Until you yourself get the experience, it is natural that you should deny Him. But a time will come when you too will have faith in Him."

"Be patient. The path of self-discipline that leads to God-realization is not an easy path: obstacles and sufferings are on the path; the latter you must bear, and the former overcome -- all by His help. His help comes only through concentration. Repetition of God's name helps concentration."

"God and His Name are not distinct from one another. Name is God Himself. The moment we think of the Name, our mind is filled with the presence of God. There is no easier way of focusing thought upon God than taking constantly His Name. When we repeat the Name aloud, we feel our heart is flooded with the ecstasy of love, because the sound of the Divine Name awakens the heart to the bliss and love of God. Although the mental repetition of the Name is held to be far more efficacious than the verbal repetition, still the rare experience of sweetness and joy derived by uttering the Name aloud is incomparable. When the entire being of the devotee thrills with rapture to the music of the Name he realizes that the Name is Brahman."

"Everything is Brahman, but this has to be realized; merely saying that you are Brahman cannot make you realize the truth. You ought to experience that state, rising above all sense of duality by freeing your mind from illusion. Your 'I' should no longer be the local, narrow individual 'I' but the universal, eternal and absolute 'I'. To realize this ineffable, perfect state, sadhana is necessary. Mind and its desires have to be conquered by concentration and purification."

"God, who is absolute existence, consciousness and bliss, is within you -- nay, you and He are not different. Unless you realize Him, there can be no true liberation and lasting peace. Please note that the first qualification necessary for the seeker of God is fearlessness. Neither the terror of solitude nor the terror of the crowd should daunt you. But solitude is a great help. Know that God, who dwells in you, is almighty. Seek His assistance by constant remembrance, meditation and prayer. Then the mind is bound to come under control. The evil passions must depart from it. Forget not the central truth that God is seated in your own heart. Don't be disheartened by failures at initial stages. Cultivate the spirit of surrender to the workings of His will in you and outside you, until you have completely surrendered up your ego-sense and have known He is in all and He is all, and you and He are one. Be patient. The path of self-discipline that leads to God-realization is not an easy path. Obstacles and sufferings are on the path; the latter you must bear and the former overcome - all by His help. His help comes only through concentration. Repetition of God's Name helps concentration."

"God-vision is nothing but to realize and feel His presence within yourself and everywhere about you, because God is an all-prevailing spirit, permeating the entire universe. The manifested worlds are not different from Him, since they are but His own expression in terms of name and form."

"Just as a flower gives out its fragrance to whomsoever approaches our uses it, so love from within us radiates towards everybody and manifests as spontaneous service."

"God is both manifest and unmanifest. The Name stands for such a God. Here the unmanifest is the all?pervading, infinite, immutable, tranquil and static spirit of God. The manifest is the entire universe of name, form and movement with all its beings, creatures and things. The Name stands for this all?inclusive and all?transcendent Godhead, who is both personal and impersonal."

"Human effort is necessary only to learn that human effort as such is useless and God's will alone is the real power that controls and brings about all events. When you realize this truth, human effort ceases and divine will starts its work in you, and then you do all things in the freedom of the soul, liberated from care, fear and sorrow. This is the real life to be attained. So leave all things to the Lord by complete surrender to Him."

"Nothing is lost or stolen. It was Ram who furnished him with vessels. It is Ram again who has taken them back. He took away His own things. So there is no question of loss or theft; therefore no case against anybody."

"Know in the first place that the God you seek is within yourself. He is the life and soul of the universe and to attain Him is the supreme purpose of life. Evil and sorrow are due to your belief that you are separate from this universal Truth. The ego has set up this wall of separation. Have a strong and intense longing to realize Him, that is, to know that your life is one with the life of the universe. Then surrender up the ego by constant identification with Him through prayer, meditation and performance of all action without desiring their fruit. As you progress on this path, which is the path of devotion, knowledge and self-surrender, your attachment to the unrealities of life will slacken, and the illusions of the mind will be dispelled. Now your heart will be filled with divine love, and your vision purified and equalized, and your actions will become the spontaneous outflow of your immortal being, yielding you the experience of true joy and peace. This is the culmination of human endeavor and fulfillment of the purpose of life."

"Love of God means Love of all beings, because God is all, and all is in God."

"Mind is only a cloud that hides the sun of Truth. Man is, in fact, God playing the fool. When He chooses, He liberates Himself."

"People do not know what the Name of God can do. Those who repeat it constantly alone know its power. It can purify our mind completely... The Name can take us to the summit of spiritual experience."

"Real independence is spiritual. Mankind today is in the clutches of false aims and aspirations and holds that material advancement, achieved by any means, can lead to happiness and human welfare. There can be no end of troubles for man so long as he clings to such mistaken ideas and fails to attune hs life to the life Divine. Selfishness and greed must be rooted out and the heart purged of base ambitions for material wealth, power and fame at the expense of others. Till then there can be no peace and happiness for man. We shall be celebrating our triumphs the wrong way if we fail to search our hearts on such occasions for the purpose of self-purification and do not remind ourselves of life’s supreme goal, which is the realization of Self or God. We should embrace the ideal of universality and cease to think in terms of separation or isolation of individuals, communities, castes, creeds and nations. We should stop exploiting our fellow-beings in any manner and learn to live in tune with the Divine."

"Place yourself as an instrument in the hands of God who does his own work in his own way."

"Take up the Name of God, and feel the sweet communion with it, and you may depend upon it, your souls through constant bathing in the nectar of the Name will not only be purified but will also be illumined with the omnipresent and omniscient light and love of God. This practice of taking the Name will lead the unyielding spirit of man to complete surrender to the omnipotent power and will of God. In the earlier stages when the Name is repeated with earnestness, faith and concentration, the face and the body of the devotee will shine with a peculiar luster, his mind will be filled with wisdom and heart with love. This is due to the predominance of Satwa Guna in the devotee. Later when the repetition is continued with the same zeal; he will behold the universe before him as the very expression of God. Becoming one with God, he will have the vision of God everywhere."

"The change is in you. The whole world is good to us if we are good. If we love the world, we may be sure, in return we shall receive nothing but love from it."

"To control the mind the best and easiest method is to repeat constantly God's Name. Concentration is attained by fixing the attention on the sound of the Name. As the mind is concentrated, there must follow meditation upon the glorious attributes of God. Continuous practice of utterance of the Name and meditation stops the restlessness of the mind and merges it into the blissful, eternal and universal Self. God remembrance is not possible unless you have an intense longing to realize Him. This intense desire is called bbakti [devotion]. This longing must so seize your mind that you should feel a sensation of acute pain when you forget God on account of selfish desires. Your actions should also go to purify your mind, i.e., they should be done in a spirit of nisbkama [desirelessness]. Purity of mind means freedom from lust, wrath and greed. For a pure mind alone can see God. Concentration itself is purity. Forget not that the God that you seek is within yourself."

"The Divine Name is thus the beginningless source of all creation and the creation itself. God, the absolute, is the nameless Name."

"The Name can free the soul from bondage. The Name can take it to the highest consummation of spiritual life. The Name can grant a blind soul Divine sight. The Name can bless an individual with a universal vision full of sublimity. The Name can lift the soul to inconceivable heights of God?realization."

"The saguna you are after is an image of your own mind and it cannot satisfy you. You ought to rise beyond all forms of sight and mind. The true saguna or body of the Lord is the universe itself, in which He is immanent. And by His power He is causing, in this manifestation, birth, growth, and dissolution of all beings and things. He is also transcendent as pure spirit. Your body is one of His expressions. Your activity has its inception in the infinite power of God. Don't be deluded by a desire to behold things which are conditioned and momentary - mere phantoms of your mind. Have the true longing to realize your immortal nature and your union with the omnipotent and omnipresent God, who is the supreme Lord of the universe. Purify your mind and heart by proper discipline and entitle yourself to this glorious vision, and attain perfect freedom and eternal bliss."

"The only way to control the mind and free it from the evils you mention is always to take the Name of God, meditate upon His great attributes and surrender all your actions to Him… You ought to practice in solitude."

"The power of the Name is invincible. A mind which is considered to be unconquerable, by the soothing influence of the Name becomes, docile, yielding and submissive. The mind itself is transformed into God by the power of the Name. He who takes refuge in the Name can work wonders. Death itself will stand in awe of him. He can command all the forces of nature and direct them, to bring about a spiritual awakening in the hearts of men. The Name can make a human being an embodiment of eternal love and joy. The Name can convert an individual into a Cosmic Reality - an ignorant soul into a very God. Where the Name of God is sung, the atmosphere is permeated with purity, peace and bliss; for the symphony of the Name spreads everywhere the splendor of love. THE Name is all?sufficient. The utterance of it is itself meditation. The ecstasy born of it is itself Samadhi. The Name is love, light, power and joy."

"The whole universe is the work of God’s art. To anything that we see, we do not give any particular importance as different from the rest of the world. But we see the whole universe equally as the manifestation of God, everything a beautiful manifestation."

"We have to take the whole universe as the expression of the one Self. Then only our love flows to all beings and creatures in the world equally."

"Lead me from the unreal to the real! Lead me from darkness to light! Lead me from death to immortality!"

"A cheerful mind cures, and wards off all mental and physical diseases."

"A concentrated and purified mind alone absorbs the teaching of the divine Truth."

"A blissful love has assumed all forms. All activities and movements are waves of this love, full of bliss."

"A heart that wells up with love is the very heart of God. God is nirguna (attributeless) but He is also saguna (with attributes) as pure, spontaneous, universal love. We can tune ourselves to this love through the melodious music of His Name."

"A free and liberated life, filled with peace within and joy in all its movements, unconditioned and unhampered by any circumstance, is the goal of perfection."

"A mind, which has been allowed to roam about uncurbed for a long time, naturally resists control that is exercised on it during sadhana, even for a short period."

"A man is called upon to live in this world in every given situation, transcending the limitations to which his ignorance has subjected him, so that he can be unaffected by the onslaught of those forces that are working in him, by looking upon all his actions and those of the world as the work of Prakriti or Shakti and Her gunas."

"After the awakening, the aspirant should be steady and unwavering in his faith, and should tread the path of discipline, taking God within him as his guide, and should not give up the struggle until the goal is reached. The speedy success of the sadhana depends upon the intensity of his longing to realize Him."

"All events in our life happen as a matter of course but to look upon them as causing happiness or misery is entirely based upon the attitude of mind."

"All action is simply the work of Prakriti or Shakti."

"Activity denotes the movements of pure love and anand, and inactivity denotes absolute peace; one is the expression of the other, as light is the expression of the Sun."

"An uncontrolled mind, although it accepts the truth, cannot retain it. The fitness of the mind for absorbing the knowledge of Divinity consists in the complete eradication of desire from it. This is done through discrimination, concentration and meditation?culminating in the realization of God."

"All, all is God?both as manifest and unmanifest."

"As the first step, feel always that you are merely an instrument in the hands of Shakti, and go through all sadhanas as if they were Her work done through you. Do not be impatient; march on steadily, and leave the question of progress and ultimate attainment to the Lord Himself."

"At the inception of all phenomenal life and existence there are the ever-abiding calmness, peace and repose of the immortal and all-pervading Truth."

"Be a votary at the shrine of the universal Lord, and do not behold His greatness only in one particular individual."

"Be active in any field that opens itself to you and do all work in a spirit of blissful service."

"Be brave and cheerful always and let no passing storms of life overpower you."

"Be cheerful and blissful always by holding constant communion with your real Being. This is the secret of life."

"Be ever conscious of the fact, through ceaseless remembrance, that Truth ever abides in you, with you and everywhere about you."

"Be ever in tune with Him who is eternally residing within you, who is changeless, immortal Spirit, who is absolute existence, consciousness and bliss?Sat-Chit-Anand."