From Note Book 2 of ‘In Woods of God-Realization’
Never read love-literature, never a novel.
Never allow anybody to associate too close to you.
Walk on your own feet. You are no longer a child to require crutchete as support. For walking why should you feel lonely. When alone, direct your feelings within you.
By pleasures (making) as well as pains (breaking), the potter prepares the pot (builds our character).
In the objects of desire it is only the inner Self that is desirable. It is you that lend lustre and beauty to each and all.
Meet men when lecturing. If you meet them at any other time let the meeting be formal. Never meet one person alone. Let there be no talk on personalities in your presence. No trifles or newspapers; or with, wishy-washy companions.
Fools praise particular beauty. Aesthetic taste is puerile and childish. All humbug. To the wise everything is equally beautiful.
If beauty is a force, is not divine law a higher force which separates and severs and rends asunder all attachment?
People walk blindly break their heads by running against the wall.
Don’t try to force on your friends what is unnatural and against the Spiritual Laws.
Keep the mind always busy, working. Allow it no rest. This is the best way to escape the fever of attachment.
The causes of love (impure or material—Ed.) (i) Want of perfect digestion; (ii) J idleness of the mind, Passivity; (iii) association with objects of senses.
God loves everybody.
If we entreat and coax the mouth of a pipe to yield water, will it? No. We have to turn the head, stop-cock or screw.
Similarly when I touch one beach of the sea-shore, do I not touch the whole ocean? When I touch your feet, do I not touch your whole frame? Similarly I see whole God in seeing you.
The world is unreal, God real. All I am. All world (is) my own. The worst prodigals (are) the dearest to me.
Away with the little worlds of our own creation. Every house is made into a world.
Away with the little private worlds. Make the whole Earth your home, and all its inhabitants your own Self.
To all those who suffer from heart-breaks and inner pangs: He who would get his body worshipped must get his body crucified. If you want to get worship first, you will have martyrdom afterwards. Christ, Socrates, Prophets, martyrdom first, worship afterwards.
In plays and theatres, people hear worship and homage offered to heroes and heroines and they like that (as they childishly like the pomp and grandeur of the Delhi Durbar, but do not mark the consequences. They want to avoid the consequent pains and keep the antecedent show.
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Children, are very good. But Nature will never allow you to remain a child all your life long. You must learn the laws. “Obey the laws or die/1
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Buddha, on a courtesan asking counsel, refused to visit her home, v but) went when she was in trouble.
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Upagupta and the eyes.
If thy eyes tempt ye, poke them out; better for the body to be void of light than for the whole being to suffer in the darkness of hell.
Pent-up desires break into foam, fume, and fury.
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Work and love can never go together.
Balance disturbed, how to restore equilibrium, quiet?
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We feel our liver or spleen when it is sick. We feel our personality or body when we are spiritually sick.
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A Negro maid-servant asked leave of her mistress to attend the Holy Communion.
Mistress: “I have no objection. But you know you have never said you were sorry about the goose you stole last Week.”
The negro-servant:—”Lor, missus, do you think I’d let an old goose stand betwixt me and my blessed Lord and Master? I’ll rather eat it up.”
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The condition of the mind in which consciousness of Sin is absent is proved by History to be most distinctively healthy.
Some of the greatest works of Art have been produced by men of this type, like the earlier Greeks.
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The words Health, Holy, Whole are from the same stock.
Health – Unity, Mental or Physical (Vedanta).
“If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of Light.”
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Be all you are in all you do.
A watch was working well and good. It got magnetised and could not work. Bury it underground and leave it there for some time. It will be in working order again.
So, keep your soul steeped in Divinity, it will lose its charmed and mesmerised character, will be in gear once more.
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The greatest recreation or rest that a worker can get is derivable from the pleasures of imagination rather than from sensuous pleasures.
All arguments may fail, all formal creeds prove false, only the limping Soul needs logic’s crutch; while to the pure in heart the very air breathes and the very ground pulses with truth. Nature and God within man’s heart are one.
Feel no responsibility. Ask for no reward.
Why should I pray? Since all things far and near but answer to my spirit’s inmost needs. I bring my joy, my gratitude, my love. I enter into life, fearless and confident. I cleanse myself from every hateful thought. I make my daily toil a song of praise. I love the Earth and feel its very life is part of me. My only prayer is gladness which I love. Why should I make appeal for help from some far source, since life is mine, since I am one with Him who is the Life?
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There is a great danger in manipulating love.
Love – pure love (divinity) – cupidity.
People either take both or reject both and are worsted either way. You have (to) sift and winnow put cupidity and must retain divinity. It is not desirable to eat chaff with grain, nor is it desirable to throw away grain with chaff.
My sleep is broken. Shall I sleep anymore? Call it what you will – I am awake – Hush! I have given bade sleep unto Him whose it was. Sleep have I put to sleep forever.
As a mother’s love justifies the existence of all her children, so, (a) Jnani, the embodiment of the world-mother, takes up whole areas of living and asserts the place of each in the complete harmony of life.