THOUGHT FOR THE DAY SWAMI KRISHNANANDA. The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India Website:

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1 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY SWAMI KRISHNANANDA The Divine Life Society Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India Website:

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS January February March April May June July August September October November December 2

3 JANUARY 1. The delight of the Self is the delight of Being. It is the Bliss of Consciousness- Absolute. The Being of Consciousness is the Being of Bliss, Eternal. It does not lie in achievement but realisation and experience, not invention but discovery. 2. The love that you feel in respect of an object is in fact the love that you feel towards that which is called perfection and completeness. The mind does not want an object; it wants completeness of being. That is what it is searching for. 3. All the procedures of meditation are, in the end, ways of awakening the Soulconsciousness which, in its depth, is, at once, God-consciousness. What is apparently extraneous and outside one s body gets vitally woven up into the fabric of one s being in rightly practised meditation. In brief, meditation is the art of uniting with Reality. 4. It may be that we try to remember God when we are comfortably placed. But the test as to whether He has really entered our hearts is whether we remember Him in sickness, suffering, opposition and times of temptation. 5. Appearances have reality in them, but reality is different from appearances. Appearances do not exist in the Absolute even as its adjectives, for it can have no adjectives other than itself. 6. Meditation is your duty. It is not something that you are doing as an occupation; it is the art of being yourself. Nothing can be more profitable for a person than to be one s own self. Prayer is an affirmation of consciousness for rousing itself to a dimension higher than its own self. 7. To be able to realise God, you have first to want God. It is almost a question of supply and demand. To want God is not merely to think but to feel through your whole being that you cannot exist without Him. The entire personality vibrates with a longing that cannot be satisfied by the beauty and the grandeur of the world. There is a want for That alone, and nothing short of it. 8. Self-realisation is synonymous with the attainment of unlimited spiritual strength. It is the strength born of independence, freedom in the highest sense. Power that is a result of the idea of possession is imaginary. 9. Every speck of space, every atom of matter, can be regarded as a vehicle which reflects one face of God. To think God would be to drown one's self in an indescribable completeness whereby one loses one's presence, the individuality evaporates like mist before the blazing Sun. 10. The world is rooted in the belief in its existence. The form of the world changes when the consciousness reaches the different relative planes of the various degrees of reality. When consciousness expands into the truth of Pure Being, the world discloses its eternal nature of Pure Consciousness alone. 3

4 11. Motive or intention behind an act decides whether it is going to fetter the agent or leave him free. The larger the motive behind an act, the greater is the freedom of the agent concerned and the higher also is the value of the act. The largeness of the motive consists in the extent to which it exceeds the limitations of personal longing, covetousness, greed or desire. 12. Yoga is a process of rejoicing. It is not a suffering. It is a movement through happiness. From one state of joy, we move to another state of joy. 13. Every adversity should stimulate more and more strength in us, enough to be able to overcome onslaughts of such types again. Every fall should propel us to a higher aspiration, a longing which should never be dampened, threatened or vanquished at any time. 14. When you try to understand things in terms of the Spirit, you will realise that all things assume a uniform meaning, even as the sunlight is equal to all objects. 15. Religion is not the act of belonging to a creed, a temple, or a church. It is an inward acceptance of one's conscious relation with the Almighty, who presents Himself as the degrees of Deity in the different religions. When we are in a holy mood, we are really in the temple of God. When we are in a state of meditation, we are in the church of Christ. The temple or the church is this very transcendence which is the spirit of religion that occupies a position superior to the empirical subjects and objects of the world. 16. Truth is the capacity to visualise things as they are in themselves, and untruth is that which obstructs this vision. 17. The passing of the soul from plane to plane is all a process of Consciousness within the Absolute. Just as our movements in the dream-world are actual spatial allocations of personality but are really within the circumference of mental activity - all dream being only within the mind - so is the transmigration of souls real empirically but are activities of Consciousness within its bosom. 18. Yoga does not mean only practice. It is something different also. It is the energy of the whole cosmos wanting to befriend you, come to you, take care of you, possess you, unite itself with you, inundate you and 'be' you. That is the Great Yoga. 19. By some mystery of the workings of Nature, as it were, divine hands begin to operate and grace descends and we are brought in contact with a proper Guru or a teacher. That itself is a great blessing; contact with a proper Guru is really coming in contact with God Himself. 20. The importance of sadhana in spiritual life is great enough to compel the attention of anyone wishing to be freed from botherations. The vexations of life are due to entanglement in externalised forms, while freedom at once manifests itself when the universal nature of these forms is beheld. 4

5 21. That the Self is of the nature of absolute Bliss is proved from the fact of its being the eternal Consciousness which is self-luminous in nature. There can be no imperfection in Consciousness. It is clear that it is free from all wants, because it is absolute and includes everything in itself. 22. The existence of what is called the knower is the beginning of all consistent thinking - rationally, scientifically or philosophically. There would be no science, no philosophy, nothing meaningful or significant in the world, if the very existence of the knower is doubtful. 23. Charity of things is of less consequence than possession of charitable feelings, and resorting to charitable speech, charitable demeanour, and charitable actions through a general charitable temperament. This is, in short, what is called selfsacrifice, for it involves parting with some part of the delights of the ego. 24. Meditation is rightly done when its object is the totality of which the visible and the conceivable are just aspects. In such meditation individuality is swallowed up into Universal Being. Here meditation itself ceases, and the object of meditation alone remains. The actions of one who knows this secret are universal actions. 25. Consciousness is the most positive of facts, the datum of all experience. It transcends all limits of space, time and causality. Consciousness is never limited, for the very consciousness of the fact of limitation is proof of its transcendental unlimitedness. 26. God loves you more than you love Him, and you are bound to achieve this glorious consummation of life. 27. The Self neither dies, nor is born, nor has it any modification. If it has these changes, they have to be experienced by some other consciousness, which argument would lead to an infinite regress. 28. I do not any more see many philosophies and many religions; they just don't exist for me. 29. The control of the mind is, therefore, equal to the finding of the relation between the finite and the Infinite. Great persistence, great understanding and capacity to discriminate is here called for. The mind has to be handled in an intelligent manner, but persistently. 30. There is a guiding hand always; there is a leading angel sitting on our very shoulders. Every person is carrying within himself or herself a guiding power, a divinity. There is a divinity that is aware of what is happening. With millions of eyes it looks at us and sees us and notices what is happening to us. 31. Life is a process of entering into God. This is achieved by seeing God in the objects as well as the actions of the world, which is not the seeing of particulars, but of the Universal in them. 5

6 FEBRUARY 1. Who seeks to know what truth do things enshrine Would know that Self is dearest all things hold. 2. The notion of oneself being identical with the body is the cause of egoism. It is this egoism that entangles all judgments of value in the preconception that knowledge is acquired through the senses and the mind or the intellect. This prejudice of egoism is samsara, the persistent idea that all knowledge is in terms of space, time and externality. 3. Thus, the whole of one's life is one of studentship in the school of creation for a recognition of a cosmic significance present in all beings. 4. This Pure Consciousness is the same as Pure Bliss, the source of Power and the height of Freedom. This is the supreme Silence of the splendid Plenitude of the Real, where the individual is drowned in the ocean of Being. 5. The four noble truths of the Buddha that there is suffering, that there is a cause for suffering, that there is a way out of suffering and that there is a state beyond suffering, are proof enough to show that he was not a nihilist in the sense in which the word is used today, but a practical man who had an eye to doing something more than merely conjecturing about Truth and its realisation. 6. The world is to be contemplated upon as a kingdom seen in a dream. It is a reality at the time of its experience but vanishes instantaneously on one's rising to wakefulness. 7. There is no thought or aspiration which cannot be fulfilled if only it is sincere and strong enough, and the mythological glories of the epic personalities are intended to foreshadow man's ascending achievements in the process of the higher evolution of consciousness to the full expression of its inherent potentialities. 8. Great men are not those who run fast and speak much but think deep and live wisely. More than doing it is being something - a change of outlook and attitude. We are great, not because we are something to the world but because we are something in ourselves, even if the whole world is not to exist at all. 9. The spiritual way of life is perhaps the most intriguing and enigmatic of all arts and sciences. 10. The philosopher-aspirant who is possessed of a flaming passion for integrating himself in Existence does not have the dull patience to linger on with the slow process of progressive self-transcendence through the channels of the different degrees of reality. 6

7 11. Unthinkable, imperceptible, is the way of Yoga. The way of the Yogi is like the track of birds in the sky or of fish in water, as they say. The track is invisible. So are those of fish in water; so is the path of the Spirit. It is invisible. 12. The sage is without hatred, and loves all. Firm in his resolution, he is yet possessed of the tenderest compassion. While wanting nothing for himself, he gives joy to all. 13. One's life-span, actions, wealth, education and death are all determined even while in the womb of the mother. The Omniscience of God is proof enough of the predetermination of everything. Human effort is a part of the way in which the universal plan works. Any egoism of man is thus sheer vanity. 14. The lover of God-the true lover of God-transcends the realm of shame. When you love God, you may become something which will not be understandable to society, the public of people. Nobody could understand Mira, the queen of a kingdom, dancing in the streets. 15. The most fundamental experience is consciousness or awareness, pure and simple, free from the self-contradictory divisions and fluctuations of thought. 16. Draupadi exclaims in the court of the Kauravas: "That is not an assembly where there are no elders; they are not elders who do not know dharma; that is not dharma which is not in consonance with truth; that is not truth which has crookedness behind it." 17. The art of yoga is the procedure which the deepest in man adopts towards the solution of the mystery of life. 18. Nonconformists did build this art of life, Not moral masons who the stones well count. 19. Just as when we touch a live wire the electric force infuses itself into our body, when we deeply meditate on God the power of the whole universe seeks entry into our personality. 20. There is eternity masquerading in this mortal frame of the human individual, the great fact of the universe which is peeping through every pore of our perceptional faculties. 21. Realisation is not an actual 'becoming', but an unfolding of consciousness, an experience of Truth, Truth that already is, Truth that is eternal. The essential existence can never change. We cannot become what we actually are not at present. 22. Buddha and Sankaracharya represent two sides in the picture of life. The purely phenomenal approach of Buddha implies the so-called solid content of the appearance called the world, and the spiritual doctrine of Sankara fills this emptiness with Soul, and completes the picture. 7

8 23. Brahma, Vishnu and Siva are not three gods, but the one God performing three functions. There can, thus, be no superiority or inferiority among them. They are like the three faces of a crystal where one face reflects the others. 24. In the final stage of worship, the soul of the devotee itself performs the worship by offering itself, by surrendering itself, in an intimate union of itself with its Beloved. 25. A difficult thing it is to become a philosopher! It is not merely reading a book, or going through the range of the history of the thoughts of philosophers. One can become a professor of philosophy, but not easily a philosopher. A philosopher is one who has an insight into the substantiality of things, and not the appearances they put on in their mutual relationship. 26. Doubts on the path of sadhana indicate that the spirit of sadhana has not been properly grasped. When there is enough conviction about the correctness of the method adopted, sadhana quickly bears fruit. 27. The seekers who austerely transform the objectifying energy into the Conscious Power that causes the blossoming of the self-sense into the objectless Consciousness are the integrated aspirants of the Absolute, whose power is used to carry on profound spiritual meditation. 28. The Jivanmukta is neither an idle man not an active man. He is a transcendental actor. His behaviour is ununderstandable even as Brahman is inscrutable, for he is Brahman itself. Whatever he does is righteous, moral and ideal, for his actions are the expressions of the Absolute itself. 8

9 MARCH 1. An analysis of the nature of the world discloses its dependence on a reality higher than its own. Every want, every wish and ambition, every type of wonder, surprise or mystery, every sense of a 'beyond oneself' suggests the existence of something outside the limitations which it indicates. 2. The relationship between the Guru and the disciple is not physical, social or personal but spiritual and, so, eternal, till the salvation of the disciple. 3. We are nationals of a psychic world, more properly than the way in which we belong to the physical world of social beings. Our psychic apparatus is a complicated structure, because it has connections with almost everything in the world. 4. Religion is the reaction of the human mind to its notion of God. 5. When God touches us, we cease to be human beings and we do not think as intellects or minds at that time. And it is impossible to describe in language what would be that state when we are magnetised by the glory of God. We melt away into nothing, we cease to be, as if we are possessed by a supernal beatitude. 6. The history of a thing is not what happens to that thing in a particular country or village, but what it is in creation as a totality. We do not exist merely in a country; we exist in the cosmos. Our status in the cosmos is our true history, and no study of a person can be complete or be free from doubt unless it is studied from the cosmical standpoint. 7. The effect of one s reading and learning can be seen in one s behaviour. If the behaviour has not changed, it means the learning acquired is like water poured over a rock, which gets wet only on the surface without allowing the water to seep into it. 8. The world loves you more than you love it, and God loves you more than you love Him. You may move slowly towards the Goal, but it comes often with a great force. When the ocean rushes into the river, it will come with a greater energy and push than the force with which the river enters the ocean. 9. When man's meditation on God ends and God begins meditation on all Creation, the consummation is reached. It is here that all questions are answered and all problems solved. 10. Compassion is the process of the Self-fulfilment of the essential Spirit through a spontaneous outflow of itself towards egoless conscious beings. 11. Thus a philosophical insight is an awakening of a new light from within, with whose aid one can illumine the dark corners of the earth, and endeavour to see things in their true colours, rather than be carried away by their chamaeleon-like shapes and presentations. 9

10 12. The love for the Eternal is the essential passion that burns in the heart of all things. 13. When we go to the furthest limits of the cosmos outside, as has been done by modern physics for instance, we will find in the farthest distance of the cosmic periphery the same thing that we find in the deepest recesses of our heart. The farthest and the nearest are the same. 14. That which is everywhere includes even the person who tries to know It. So, That which is everywhere cannot be known unless the knower also becomes That. Knowing Brahman is being Brahman. Knowing Reality is being Reality. Thought and Reality coalesce and become Absolute Being. 15. Dharma is that sustaining universal impulse which conduces to the prosperity of the individual both here and hereafter. This means that the observance of Dharma does not violate the laws of the world for the sake of the Spirit or of the Spirit for the sake of the world. It views existence both in its depth and its width. 16. A genius in medical science and a genius in literature are not actually doing two different things, though it may appear that literary activity has very little to do with medical research, or vice versa. The world works for a single purpose, though it may employ different personalities and instruments in different ways for the fulfilment of its intention. 17. What 'happens' is done by God. What is 'initiated' is done by the Jiva. We should be able to distinguish between what happens without our interference and what is done with it. 18. The object of meditation is the degree of reality aligned to our state of being. This is a sentence which may appear like an aphorism. We have to meditate only on that which is the exact counterpart of our present level of knowledge and comprehension. There should not be any mistake in the choice of the object. If the object is properly chosen, the mind will spontaneously come under control. The restlessness and the resentment of the mind is due to a wrong choice that is made in the beginning. 19. Identify yourself with That which is everywhere. If it is everywhere, you are nowhere. Do you understand me? So who is meditating? That which is everywhere is meditating on itself. 20. The world is nothing but an idea, and a big idea it is. The universe is an idea ultimately-one thought. There are no substances; solid things do not exist. It is only an idea that is operating in the cosmos. 21. The relativity of the cosmos implies the existence of worlds within worlds and worlds interpenetrating one another without one being aware of the existence of others. Everyone is locked up within the processes of his own mind and hence worlds which exist outside the purview of a particular set of thought-processes 10

11 cannot be known to exist. The number of worlds, therefore, cannot have any limit. It is infinity moving within infinity. 22. Yoga practice itself is a miracle. The affection that yoga has for you, they say, is equal to hundred mothers' love. You love yoga but yoga also loves you. 23. All humanity is inside you, with you, within you, and has taken possession of you. The principle of every individual in the world is inside you also, so that on different occasions you can manifest the character of any person in this world. Anything is inside you; only the proper button has to be pushed. 24. Our meditations and our worships are really silent invocations of the characteristics of the Object of our worship and meditation. Every worship is an invocation, and every form of meditation is an invocation; and invocation means the calling of the force into our own being and the planting of the power of the Divine in our own personality. 25. Spiritual sadhana is ultimately an effort to cease from all effort. This is the highest effort, because no one normally can be without exerting oneself in some direction. All activity is a process of moving away from the Centre. The activity to cease from such activity is sadhana. 26. If you know the meaning of what the Self is, then you will automatically know how to go there. 27. Constant meditation on Om allows the individual consciousness to take the form of Om itself which is unlimited in its nature. The meditator becomes ultimately the object of meditation itself. Om is the symbol of Brahman and, therefore, meditation on Om leads to the realisation of Brahman. 28. Samsara or world-existence comes to an end only when the jiva recognises its true identity with the Absolute. The condition of the jiva-consciousness is just the condition of the sheath with which it identifies itself at any given time. When the Atman is discovered to be different from the sheaths, it is at once realised as Brahman. 29. Dissatisfaction is regarded as the mother of all philosophy. Philosophy is the child of a recognition of the inadequacies in life. 30. They say that procrastination is the thief of time, postponing a work which needs to be done immediately. There is no use committing the same mistake again and again and resolving every day to avoid it, but with no success. Something positive has to be done with strength of will. 31. The immersion of what we really are in what we are not is what is called the affairs of the world. The whole panorama of the drama of existence in this world the whole history of mankind is the story of the antics which human nature plays by running out of itself and becoming what it is not. 11

12 APRIL 1. "He who is humbler than a blade of grass and more patient than a tree; who respects others but wants not any respect for oneself, is fit to take the Name of the Almighty Lord." This was the famous instruction of Sri Gauranga Mahaprabhu. 2. Moreover, the love of the Self is the basis of all other loves. One loves another, because one loves the Self the most. The ultimate purpose of all loves is to rest in the satisfaction of one's own Self. 3. There is no such thing as an individual function, anywhere. The whole world is active when even a single event takes place at any point in space, just as the whole body is active even if a little thorn is to prick the sole of the foot. 4. It is unwise to say that the world is good or bad, for the world is one of the conditions through which the gunas - sattva, rajas and tamas - evolve in the course of time. All things can be found always in different places and hence our narrow judgments confined to a limited perception of truth cannot be correct. How can we say that any part of prakriti is good or bad? 5. The Cosmic Mind acts as the ultimate subject whose consciousness is the creator of all norms, in all the degrees of manifestation. The worldness in what is manifested, or, in other words, the very act or process of manifestation itself, is to be construed in the sense of what is illusory, though the world-essence or the ultimate substance of the world is eternal. It is the form and not the essence that is unreal. 6. Man realises his ideals more and more as and when his consciousness approximates, in greater and greater degree, the being of God. The deeper the realisation, the more inward is the manner in which the values are enjoyed in a condition which tends to advance towards infinitude, in which the remoteness of ideals gets expanded into a boundless Spirit, with neither inside nor outside. 7. In your dealings with another person, try first to think through the feelings of that person and then try again to overcome the limitations of those feelings by rational methods of approach. This will avoid much of the unnecessary tangles in which social life is caught up every day. 8. Meditation on the Eternal Being is the supreme form of love. Meditation starts with duality and ends in Unity, from an adoration of God to the being of God. 9. Hanuman is said to have told Sri Rama: "From the point of view of the body, I am Thy servant; from the point of view of the jiva, I am a part of Thyself; from the point of view of the Atman, I am Thy own Self." These three standpoints correspond to the three great systems of philosophy propounded by Madhva, Ramanuja and Sankara. 10. There is a subterranean relationship between our inner contents and the whole cosmos outside. The moment we begin to enter the realm of yoga practice, we also 12

13 start operating upon our cosmic relationships. This is something important to remember. 11. You will find finally that there is nothing so difficult as God-experience, and yet nothing so simple as attainment. In a trice you will understand what it is. It is simple because it is yourself, and it is also difficult because it is yourself. 12. The Ganga destroys sins; the moon destroys heat; the kalpavriksha destroys poverty. But the company of the wise ones destroys sin, heat and poverty all at once. 13. Spirituality is above ethics and morals. It is not limited to the dos and don ts of religion. The more we get united in spirit, the lesser is the need for these dos and don ts. We become our own law, and nobody else need inject law into our veins. 14. The object of meditation is the final choice that you make in this world. You have selected it as the ultimate meaning for your life. 15. The thought of God is like the centripetal cohesive force in a star or a planet, which drives its constituents to its centre by a pressure of inwardly directed energy, and is strikes a universally attuned equilibrium of the entire personality in relation to creation as a whole, provided the thought is deep enough and is sincerely raised in one s mind. It produces a thrill beyond words. 16. The purpose of life on earth is the realisation of this stupendous depth of the Being of all beings, without which life becomes a failure. If one would know it here, then there is the true end of all aspirations. If one would not know it here, then great is the loss for such a person. Knowing it in every particular being, the wise, on departing from this world, become immortal. (Kena Upanishad II. 5). 17. The field of battle is the field of life. The things that we want to do in this world are the confrontations before us and our wisdom will be judged by the manner in which we deal with these situations. A situation means anything and everything with which we are connected, anything that we are supposed to do in the world. And in this duty that we are called upon to perform, there is no such thing as a superior or inferior duty. 18. Swami Sivananda, with the stupendous experience of one who has dived into the core of life, teaches that the one Brahman appears as the universe in all the planes or degrees of its manifestation, and, therefore, the Sadhaka has to pay his homage to the lower manifestation before he steps into the higher. 19. When the senses stand together with the mind and the intellect does not shake, the state of yoga supervenes. The secret of meditation is this: The mind and the intellect should shine, but not shine upon things other than the shining awareness. This is the realisation of God within. 20. There is no such thing as renunciation, if it is to be properly understood. You are renouncing only an inadequacy and not a reality. It is only the renunciation of an 13

14 inadequate idea that you have about things, for the sake of a higher, more adequate achievement. It is a renunciation of a lesser degree of consciousness for the sake of a larger, more inclusive consciousness, so that it is not renunciation at all it is only a growth into a higher realm. 21. God s Grace is a powerful tonic which can correct the heart, lungs, stomach and the general condition of the body. This Divine Grace is drawn through meditation on God. 22. Love that wants an object is not perfect. True love is never expressed. It simply melts in experience. It is transient affection and defective faith that pour themselves out on objects of sense. Love is spilt on ashes and not ennobled when it is directed to fleeting appearances. True love is self-integrating and not the medium of the interaction of the subject and the object. 23. The fact that we are able to know one another implies that we can psychologically come together. This, again, implies secondarily that this understanding or thinking or communication of thought between one and the other is an external indication of a basic unity between the two persons. There would be no such thing as the concept of two unless there is the concept of the one already behind them. 24. A tremendous velocity is assumed by the personality of the person established in knowledge, and so the one who is established in the highest knowledge may appear to be doing nothing at all. 25. I have learned the art of Total Thinking. For me there is only One Thought and every thought is included in it. Everyone s thought is a part of that thought. 26. There is no such thing as knowing Brahman, because the knower of Brahman cannot separate himself from it. The Absolute transcends every function, becoming and process. It is beyond thought, emotion, will, feeling, sensation, ascertainment, name, form and action. 27. A Guru is one to whom we can open our heart wholly, and there should be no kind of hesitation or reservation in his case. This is because the Guru is not just a person in the world; he is a superior individual who has risen over individuality to some extent, and therefore, he can accommodate any kind of psychological repercussions through which a student has to pass, because he himself has passed through all those stages, and they would not be repellent to him. 28. The highest fulfilment is the result of the highest renunciation. The less you want, the more you get. He who wants nothing from the world finds the world falling at his feet. Even the gods are afraid of him who wants nothing for himself. 29. The Advaita of Sankara is not so much the assertion of oneness as the negation of duality, as the names of his system suggests. God is not one or two or three, for He is above numerical affirmation. He is not anything that we can think of, but, 14

15 however, He does not involve in any difference; hence He is Advaita, non-dual. Such is the cautious name of Sankara s system of philosophy. 30. The whole effort of life is nothing but a progressive movement towards harmony of personality with the environment outside in various degrees and stages. The whole thing that you are doing is a cosmic work. It is not some person doing, somewhere sitting in one corner. Every activity is a Cosmic Action taking place through every individuality, at all times. 15

16 MAY 1. The aim of philosophy is right living. Genuine, real philosophy, worth its name, is expected to enable one to live the truest life possible a life of wisdom, free from the imperfections by which ordinary unphilosophical life is characterised. 2. O Guru! Without Thy infinite compassion, no Self-realisation is possible. Thy grace comes in the form of self-effort and meditation and Thy grace alone removes my ignorance. Sadhana is possible only with Thy blessing. If thou turnest away from me, Truth will turn away from me. Thou hast illumined me, O Lord! Prostrations to Thy Lotus-Feet! 3. The mind and the body get identified with each other, like fire and iron in a red hot iron-ball, in such a way that thought cannot be separated from object. There is always a flow of thought with perpetual reference to the body, and all human judgment is thus vitiated by the prejudice that the body is the thinking self. All science and even philosophy cannot help playing second fiddle to this erroneous hypothesis, and thus cut the ground from under their own feet. 4. Whatever image or description we can employ in understanding this process of the rise of one s being into the levels of religion, we will find that words cannot touch the spirit. No prophet has endeavoured to describe the universal dimension of religion in its essentiality, except in terms of the requirements of a particular time historically, or of a place geographically. The Universal can be comprehended only by itself. 5. The test of spiritual advancement is a gradual attainment of freedom from doubts of all kinds and a conviction of having reached a settled understanding in regard to one s true aim of life. It is this conviction that brings inner strength and power to face all opposition. 6. Yoga is a universal adventure of the universal that is present in the particular that is man. It is the principle of universality that is in us that practises yoga, not the individuality that is in us. 7. Being is truth in the transcendent sense without reference to anything else. It does not pay heed to the difficulty of man that he cannot transcend the limitations of relativistic consciousness and so naturally takes the value and meaning of the relative order to be the truth. The highest value of truth is equated with pure being, for non-being can have no value. 8. The whole point about the religions is that they are like many roads leading to one peak of a mountaintop, where they will all merge into one single spot. If this is accepted, there will be fraternity and brotherly feeling among the religions in the world. 16

17 9. Yoga is a universal science. It is not a religion of a particular creed, cult or nationality. It is a science of living. Therefore, the way in which we have to rightly live in this world is yoga. 10. It is possible that if you finally want a thing, it will come. It is a psychological secret that if you strictly believe that what you want has come, it should come and it has to come, because your resolution touches the object that you need and it gravitates towards you immediately. 11. Superhuman picturisations which are the content of epic and heroic poetry transmute and transform for the time being the consciousness of man into the very substance of the vision that is presented through the saga of such elevating poetry. Man is just what he thinks and no thought of his can be merely a flight of empty imagination. 12. The sense of perfection slowly enters the mind, when it gradually learns to dovetail the various discrepant particulars of the world into a coherent whole. This stage comes when the existence and activity of the mind coalesce in an adjustment of oneself with God s Creation. 13. Tapas is the process of stilling the senses and the mind and allowing the lustre of the Atman to manifest itself spontaneously. The power of the sage is this energy of the Atman revealed by the cessation of the externalising activity of the senses and the mind. 14. The universe is something like a powerful radar system that is set up from all sides to record every action and every event that may take place anywhere, even of the least intensity or momentum. 15. The more you are alone, the more are you near to your Spirit. This loneness of your life promises you greater satisfaction than all the contacts that you can make in your social life. The Spirit does not come in contact with anything, and its joy cannot be enhanced by contacts; on the other hand, all contacts are a restriction on its expression. 16. Every activity directs itself to a state where activity itself ceases and, in the end, all action finds itself in a state of abolition of all necessity for action. 17. Every moment of life should be regarded as the last moment, as there is no knowing when this moment will come. When it is said that the last thought of a person should be God s thought, we are impliedly admonished to remember God every day and every moment. 18. God is here, and not in the heavens above. The Absolute is just here, under the very nose of ours. The eternity that we are going to experience, the moksha that we are to realise, is not merely an original Archetype that is removed in space. One becomes giddy when thinking about it. 17

18 19. Existence must be the same as consciousness in order that existence may be known. If it is not known, it itself is not. Existence is really the existence of consciousness. The cognitive organ modifying the basic consciousness follows existence. 20. Even thousands of fathers and mothers cannot equal God in compassion and concern, in love and affection, in goodness and kindness. The love that God has for man is a million-fold greater than the love that man can imagine in himself in respect of God. This mighty law of God operates in this manner because of His being present everywhere, at every time. 21. When one is in a mood of meditation, one is practising true religion, but by so doing one does not belong to any particular religious cult. We live religion when we are in a state of meditation, because religion is the relation between man and God, between the soul and the Absolute. The affirmation of it in life is religion s aim. 22. Often, what matters most is not the words that are said but the way in which they are said. People either bore or irritate others with what they regard as wisdom, when it is wrongly uttered or expressed at the wrong moment or told to the wrong person, though the intention behind it may be good. Judgment of circumstances is necessary to bring about the requisite result. Else effort may become a waste or even harmful. 23. Knowledge and power go together where knowledge is identical with the being of what is known. 24. The highest scientific mind always tries to cling to the Whole, and not to even the biggest part, for, according to it, partiteness in existence is illogical and an ignorant conception. Truth, dependent on its own Self, transcends even the ideas of omniscience and omnipotence, for these involve relations which are a limitation on the Absolute. 25. The contemplation of the Absolute is the highest form any religion can take. But this enterprise of the mind requires of it an understanding of the universal situation far beyond normal human comprehension. The popular minds of the masses need a religion they can appreciate and absorb into their daily life, and they demand a religious goal which they can intelligibly plant in the soil of their feelings. 26. The energy that leaks through the senses by way of excitation and pleasure-seeking diminishes the psychic force that is necessary for meditation. Hence before any attempt at successful meditation this energy leakage has to be blocked, and the direction of the flow of this energy turned inward. 27. Freedom does not mean doing whatever one likes. Freedom is that state of consciousness that does things in the light of the harmony that it has to maintain 18

19 between the subject and the object. Otherwise, it could not be freedom. You are free only when moving in right directions. Your consciousness should operate properly. Only then does the question of freedom arise. 28. When true knowledge arises, we are happy. When true knowledge arises, we give fearlessness to all; and when true knowledge arises, we, too, are fearless, and no one can frighten us. Knowledge is, therefore, happiness; knowledge is virtue; knowledge is power. 29. The teaching of the Yoga Vasishtha emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the seer or observer, there has to be presupposed the existence of a consciousness between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link were not to be, there would be no perception of existence. There cannot be a consciousness of relation between two things unless there is a consciousness relating the two terms and yet standing above them. The study of the perceptional situation discloses the fact that the subject and the object are phases of a universal consciousness. 30. The great love of the Jnani for all creatures of the universe cannot be equalled by any other s love or compassion. The love of the Jnani is real love. It is only the Jnani that can serve and help the world in the best possible way, for he knows that all is the one Self, the Great Being of Brahman. Without knowing this, how can one be truly good and virtuous? 31. The waking world of space, time, objects and relations is similarly constituted as a manifestation of the Cosmic Mind, thus having no real objectivity in itself. Profound meditation in this way will lessen the intensity of a longing and attachment in respect of persons and things. 19

20 JUNE 1. To describe Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj as a founder or a president of the Divine Life Society is to describe him in the poorest manner possible because he was not just a founder of the Divine Life Society; he was himself something, even if the Divine Life Society were not to be there. He was a man of God who lived a life of utter divine vision, a descent of a power which originated this universe. And he was himself a completeness and a comprehensiveness which can be best described as integration. 2. When you are absolutely alone, when there are no things to contact you, no persons to see you, when you are in the solitude of your own room, if your happiness is the most intense, that would perhaps indicate your progress along the spiritual path, your inner growth. 3. The Being of Reality consists in Experience, uncontradicted by transcendence and untrammelled by modification. In this One Whole all appearances get fused, and they vanish into it. This Reality-Experience is one and attributeless, true to itself which is Alone, above thought, and above every partial aspect of being, but including all, none of which can be complete without getting itself merged in the fully real, which is the Absolute. 4. The depth and solidity of substance in the world is similar to the distance and substantiality of things seen in a mirror. This truth is not realised in life because the body of the observer is itself involved in this reflected appearance called the world. 5. Every event is a cosmic event; every baby is a child of the whole cosmos. It belongs to the universe. Everyone belongs to the universe myself, yourself, all people. 6. Tapas which is an adoration of God is different from austerities which merely subjugate the senses or restrain the mind from its normal operations. In an honest presenting of oneself before the Almighty, which is the greatest tapas, these operations automatically take place. 7. It is said that when the devotee takes one stop towards the Lord, he is greeted by the Lord with a hundred steps. The Bhakti Sastras state that the love of God for the devotee is more than man s love for God. The power of the Whole is more intense than the force of the part. 8. Who is a fool? He who thinks that the world has any regard for him and is really in need of him. 9. In Indian theological systems or epistemological analysis, it has been discovered that the very consciousness of an object, even if it be the simple consciousness of an insignificant thing in the world, is a universal phenomenon. 20

21 10. The quality of meditation is dependent upon the character of the object of meditation. When the mind contemplates upon the divisionless Being, it itself becomes divisionless and vanishes into the Absolute. 11. "He who knows, knows not; he who knows not, knows." This is a statement in the Upanishad, meaning that one who has realised the Truth has no personalityconsciousness, and one who has it knows not the Truth. 12. The magic works by a single stroke of mental effort, and this magic is the realisation of Truth. 13. Yoga is union with God, the Almighty. Yes, it is true; this is yoga, in the end, but it also means that yoga is every stage of the ascent of the spirit in the direction of this supreme attainment. Though there may be millions of steps to be taken in the direction of God-realisation, each step is, also, yoga. 14. We can judge ourselves as to the spiritual progress we make by the extent to which we are free from seeing defects in others. The wider we grow, the narrower becomes the eye which sees defects in the world. 15. The heroic leap of the individual into the unknown is the expression of the want of a superior joy. The dissatisfaction with limitedness in life directs the soul to catch the fullness of perfection in the truth of its Integrality, with which the individualised condition is not endowed. Hence, universal movement and individual effort, though differing in their altruism of nature, can be understood as a reflection of the tendency to Self-perfection of Being. 16. To define Brahman is to deny the essentiality of its all-inclusiveness. For, definition cannot but be partial. When it is said that Brahman is something, it is simultaneously asserted thereby that something is not Brahman. But such a method of defining Brahman is incorrect, for there is not anything which is not Brahman. Brahman is everything that the mind can think of and which is even unthinkable. 17. The pain generally felt at death is due to the nature of the intensity of the desires with which one continued to live in the physical body. The more is the love for the Universal Being entertained in life, the less would be the pain and agony of departing from the body. 18. It is to be remembered that the value of meditation does not so much depend on the length of time that you take in sitting for it, but in the quality or the intensity of feeling operating at that moment. Quantity alone is not important enough. 19. No saint has been able to maintain the spiritual balance throughout his life. There have been occasional reversals though these might not have left any impression on their minds any more than the mark left by a stick drawn on water. But the mark is there when it appears. Such is the difficulty of leading the spiritual life. The case of immature seekers is much more precarious, indeed. 21

22 20. Beings know it not, and so they suffer. When we turn our face away from this one Reality, we open the door to self-imprisonment. No achievement, either on earth or in heaven, no greatness pertaining to the world of name and form, is worth considering. The love of life is based on the love of the Self. 21. The myths of religion, therefore, constitute active meditations of the religious consciousness on the higher realities of life, and even fables and fairy tales which we enjoy in leisurely readings cannot be considered as empty of some realistic content, because vacuous ideas cannot arise from the mind, all ideas being ultimately rooted in a vivid or faint expression of some degree or percentage of reality. 22. One has to be friendly with every stage of creation, and yoga is nothing but this establishment of amity and friendliness in every level of creation. All tension and disparity is overcome by a gradual accommodation of oneself with the atmosphere in all the levels in which it may manifest itself. 23. Spiritual Knowledge means the essence of the knowledge of everything that exists in generality as well as in particularity. It is the Knowledge of the highest cause, the knowledge of which means the knowledge of all its effects also. 24. The universal has to be implanted in the particular. God has to descend into the heart of man. At least as a little iota of reality, a spark of that Fire should be present in us. Then we can be said to be set on the spiritual path. What we call the spiritual way of living is the way of God, the way of the Absolute, the way of the Tao, as they call it. Though we might have not achieved it, contacted it, or understand it fully, we should be sure of moving in that direction, rightly. 25. This itself is a very superior type of meditation where you regard selfconsciousness as the object of meditation. A person who meditates in this manner on the supreme self-consciousness prior to the perception of every kind of object, of even space itself, such a person is superior to that extent, and he has freedom to the extent of the realm of self-consciousness. 26. We should not try to be more strict on others than we are on ourselves. Our task is not so much to change the world as to change ourselves. 27. As one adores, so does one become. Who will not adore from the deepest recesses of the heart the best of things conceivable, which goes deep into the feelings, on which one broods for ever and ever? 28. The pinnacle of yoga is the absorption of the mind in the object of its concentration. The whole technique borders upon an attunement of the subjective consciousness, in its wholeness, to the structure of the object of concentration. 29. The teaching of the Yoga-Vasishtha emphasises that when there is perception of an object by the seer or observer, there has to be pre-supposed the existence of a consciousness between the subject and the object. If this conscious connecting link 22