Swami Vivekananda: 12 things we can imbibe from the yogi

By NewsGram Staff Writer

The world knows Swami Vivekananda as a Hindu monk and a philosopher. His speeches and his ideologies are followed world over.

NewsGram brings you 12 famous quotes by Swami Vivekananda

1. Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life, dream of it, think of it, live on that idea. Let the brain,the body, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced.

2. All the power is within you, you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak, do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. You can do anything and everything, without even the guidance of any one. Stand up and express the divinity within you.

3. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live.

4. Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give, it will come back to you — but do not think of that now, it will come back multiplied a thousandfold — but the attention must not be on that. Yet have the power to give. Give and there it ends. Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to give. So, give willingly.

5. Take up one idea, your Ishta (personal deity) and let the whole soul be devoted to it. Practice this from day to day until you see the result, until the soul grows. And if it is sincere and good, that very idea will spread till it covers the whole universe. Let it spread by itself. It will all come from inside out. Then you will say that your Ishta is everywhere, and that He is in everything.

6. Extreme love to God is Bhakti (devotion), and this love is the real immortality, getting which a man becomes perfectly satisfied, sorrows for no loss, and is never jealous.

7. The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.

8. The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. But, instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use is polishing up the outside when there is no inside? The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were,upon his fellow-beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes. That personality put upon anything will make it work.

9. The Vedanta recognizes no sin, it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta, is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power, and you cannot do this and that. Every time you think in that way, you, as it were, rivet one more link in the chain that binds you down, you add one more layer of hypnotism on to your own soul. Therefore, whosoever thinks he is weak is wrong, whosoever thinks he is impure is wrong and is throwing a bad thought into the world.

10. Mother is the first manifestation of power and is considered a higher idea than father. With the name of Mother comes the idea of Shakti(Divine power), Divine Energy, and Omnipotence, just as the baby believes its mother to be all-powerful, able to do anything. The Divine Mother is the Kundalini ("coiled up" power) sleeping in us; without worshiping Her we can never know ourselves. All-merciful, all-powerful, omnipresent are attributes of Divine Mother. She is the sum total of the energy in the universe. Every manifestation of power in the universe is "Mother". She is life, She is intelligence, She is Love. She is in the universe yet separate from it. She is a person and can be seen and known. Established in the idea of Mother, we can do anything.

11. The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness, the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside. All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm (which is in your power to do), and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you. It is like the hydrostatic paradox, one drop of water can balance the universe. 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.

12. No amount of ignorance or wrong ideas can put a barrier between the soul and God. Even if there be no God, still hold fast to love. It is better to die seeking a God than as a dog seeking only carrion. Choose the highest ideal and give your life up to that. Death being so certain, it is the highest thing to give up life for a great purpose.

(All the quotes are taken from "Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda")