Vedanta

There are three steps to spiritual realization: hearing the truth, reasoning upon the truth, and meditation on the truth. What is hearing the truth like? It is like listening to music as the deer does, fascinated by it. He is completely unaware of the hunter aiming at him. To meditate on the truth is to become absorbed—like the legendary cockroach, which gives up its own nature and becomes a caterpillar by constantly thinking of a caterpillar.

We have read different stories that have been written about him; we know the scholars and their writings, and the higher criticism; and we know all that has been done by study. We are not here to discuss how much of the New Testament is true, we are not here to discuss how much of that life is historical. It does not matter at all whether the New Testament was written within five hundred years of his birth, nor does it matter even, how much of that life is true.

The wave rises on the ocean, and there is a hollow. Again another wave rises, perhaps bigger than the former, to fall down again, similarly, again to rise—driving onward. In the march of events, we notice the rise and fall, and we generally look towards the rise, forgetting the fall. But both are necessary, and both are great.

The wise do not teach spiritual precepts unless they are asked to do so; they hide their wisdom. They impart knowledge only when there is genuine earnestness in the seeker. They do not enter into arguments. Spiritual teachers are like physicians: First, they have to diagnose at the disease of the patient, then they administer the medicine.

One must have the inner conviction that whatever happens in this world happens by His will. Success and failure come by His will. The achievements of so many clever people in this world have come to naught! Everything is His will! Do you think the Ramakrishna Mission will last forever? It will degenerate in time, and the Lord will have to incarnate again.

At one period of my life I used to live continually in an ecstatic state. Then the Lord suppressed this mood.

The ego and the Self stand at two opposite ends of our spiritual journey. Our inquiry begins with the ego and culminates in the realization of the Self.

We are now living an age of slogans. One of the much-repeated slogans is that religion is the opiate of the people and is therefore to be avoided as poison. As a result of hearing this constantly, some of us, who are not prepared to use our God-given power of reasoning, come to believe in it and lose our faith even in the true religion, which in the words of Swami Vivekananda, is really “the manifestation of the divinity already in man.” There is religion and religion.

In spiritual life, we use the word “obstacles” with reference to both the inner and the outer world, to physical and subtle objects, and to conditions and situations which stand in the way of our spiritual progress.

Busy people have no time to think of either death or their mortality. They are preoccupied with life—the life which they possess and enjoy as something vividly present and which ramifies in different directions through their various interests, physical, intellectual, and emotional. But then death is a certainty for every one of us, and when that certainty draws nearer even the busiest people discover that they were callous to this vitally important subject.