“Do as you would be done by,” i.e. Put yourself in the place of the man towards whom your action is directed.

Could you put yourself in the place of the robber and apply the Golden Rule?

It is the refusal to continue the struggle for existence. The followers of the Golden Rule may indulge in hopes of heaven, but they must reckon with the certainty that other people will be masters of the Earth.

* * * * *
In most Institutions, the prosperity and glory of the soul-saving machine become the end, instead of a means, of soul-saving.
Error which is not pleasant is surely the worst form of wrong.

Shakti! “Nature wants nothing but a fair field and free play for her darling, the strongest.”

Having created God in their own image, theologians find no difficulty in ascribing to Him their own motives.

Every pleasure increases vitality; every pain (feeling of melancholy) decreases vitality.

* * * * *
Sunshine raises the rate of respiration;
Raised respiration is an index of raised vital activities in general.

There is no such tonic as happiness.

* * * * *
Morality springs from the meditation
I am Bliss in All.
Peace in the heart makes us fit to survive.

* * * * *
He wins in the struggle who carries more happiness within his heart. The vitality and life of the sorrow-stricken is sapped.

“The ideally moral man is one in whom the moving Equilibrium is perfect.” Herbert Spencer

* * * * *
“We must recognize the fact that, considered apart from other effects, it is immoral so to treat the body as in any way to diminish the fullness or vigour of its vitality.” – Herbert Spencer

Questions of eating and drinking have supreme moral significance.

* * * * *
Sentient existence can evolve only on condition that pleasure-giving acts are life-sustaining acts.

In a Jnani the feeling of obligation plays no part and so his acts are purely moral, being guided by love and joy-inspiring.

True morality is free of fear and obligation.
(Fear – social, political or religious.)

Perfect Morality = Justice and beneficence => fulfilment of contracts.

Where satisfaction to self is identical with collective benefit to others.
Where the Complete living of the individual consists with, and conduces to, the complete living of all.

* * * * *
It is quite consistent to assert that Happiness is the ultimate aim of action, and at the same time to deny that it can be reached by making it the immediate aim.

In Order to Get them one must Forget them.

* * * * *
All desires are nascent forms of the feelings to be obtained by the efforts they prompt.

“The sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory and will diminish as fast as moralization increases.”
– H. Spencer

The individual who is inadequately egoistic loses more or less of his ability to be altruistic.

* * * * *
Extreme altruism is suicidal.

* * * * *
Let us aspire and move.
We may be commonplace men, but life ia itself a commonplace.

“Persistence in performing a duty ends in making it a pleasure.”

In a perfect Jnani, right acts (deeds) become as spontaneously imperative as the demands of healthy appetites. That which is ultimately good brings as much immediate satisfaction as the cravings and sensations when answered.

* * * * *
Thus highest morality is just such an adjustment of inner relations to outer relations that the good outside becomes greatest joy within. And this is in Jnani.

If some action is performed under the obedience of moral obligation, the fact proves that the special faculty concerned is not equal to its function, and the moral conduct has not become the normal or natural conduct. Morality – further the lives of other citizens.

Each has a private interest in public morals and profits by improving them.

* * * * *
Lack of benevolence might be at worst immoral but Lick of exactness and right sense of proportion (is) stupidity.

“To sacrifice exactness and due proportion for supposed benevolence is unjust and in reality irreligious.”

According to Biology
If the life led under given social conditions is such that suffering is daily inflicted, or is daily displayed by associates, sympathy cannot (/row. For the growth of sympathy, environment should be pleasing and encouraging.

Fertility must diminish along with high mental development. (H. Spencer, Principles of Biology)

Vedanta – active sympathy to such a degree that Altruism and Egoism become identical to us.

“Reform is a thing which has to be kept at a distance to please us.” Burke.

Hard to break off from our social moorings!

Every reform was once a private opinion, and an Institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. (Emerson.)

A community is adorned not by great men with small views, but small men with great views.

* * * * *
What are heroes for if not to put heroism in those around them?

The religious leaders, they begin to kick when you prick.

We fear social ostracism a little too much as children fear to go into the dark.
It is steering, not drifting that can save any society.

* * * * *
Garibaldi while living in a hotel in Italy heard that a man was running amuck with a sword in hand and threatening the lives of all he saw and met. There were hundreds of persons, but none could venture forth and- put him down. Garibaldi hearing of it came out of his room when all the rest were flying away, and without sword or stick in hand ran up to the man and said, ” Stop there and throw down your sword.” The man stopped and threw down the sword instantly.

One problem could be solved by
1. Arithmetic, Mensuration, Algebra, Geometry, Differential Calculus, Co-ordinate Geometry. So, the different religions can reach a solution through different means.
2. Kills come from different springs, follow their own courses, meet at last in the large stream.
3. Students from different villages study in their respective village schools; unite in town schools; those again in Colleges; these latter in a University.
4. Would you like all the trees in your garden to be possessed of monotonous uniformity? By no means.
So is variety, diversity welcome to the gardens of this world.
5. Surgical operation necessary where an inflammation has gathered head, so should healthy public opinion cut off the injurious boils on the body politic.
6. Criticisms round off our punctiliousness and cure our one-sidedness, make us exact.

* * * * *
Belief:—
Believe in God – But believe in (or depend on) nothing else.

Love God – But love nothing of show and form. Belief in form = idolatry; Love of form = carnality

* * * * *
Peace within me, Peace without me,
Peace to the right of me, Peace to the left of me, Peace before me, Peace behind me, Peace above me, Peace below me.

* * * * *
When industry and virtue meet and kiss,
Holy their union, and the fruit is Bliss.
“Who, though ever ready to bow down to the dust before the majesty of Truth when it conquers their intellects, breathe nothing but the pure mountain air of free thought and free inquiry”.

* * * * *
When I am pure,
I shall have solved the mystery of life.
I shall be sure,
I am in Truth and Truth abides in me.
I shall be safe and save wholly free,
When I am pure,

* * * * *
It is the custom of men to wander about in this world of effects and to mistake its illusions for realities, eternally transposing and re-adjusting these effects in order to arrive at a solution of human problems, instead of reaching down to the underlying cause which is at once the centre of unification and the basis upon which to build a peace-giving solution of human life.

Though walking in the midst of Hell, its flames fall back before and around him, so that not one hair of his head can be singed.
He is like a man who has climbed a mountain, and thereby risen above all the disturbing currents in the valleys below him. The clouds pour down their rains, the thunders roll and the lightnings flash, the fogs obscure and the hurricanes uproot and destroy, but they cannot reach him on the calm heights where he stands, and where he dwells in continual sunshine and peace.

Foregoing Self the Universe grows I,

* * * * *
The secret of Life is to find the Divine Centre within oneself and to live in and from that, instead of in that outer circumference of disturbances. All the yesterdays of such a person are the tide washed and untrodden sands; no sin shall rise up against him to torment and accuse him and destroy his sacred peace. His to-morrows are as seeds which shall germinate, bursting into beauty and potency of life, no doubt shall shake his trust, no uncertainty rob him of repose. The Present is his, only in the immortal Present does he live, and it is as the eternal vault of blue above which looks down silently and calmly, yet radiant with purity and light.
When wilt thou learn thy lessons, O child of earth! All thy sorrows cry out against thee; every pain is thy just accuser, and thy griefs are but the shadows of thy unworthy and perishable self.

* * * * *
The spiritual Heart of man is the Heart of the Universe. By no theological subterfuge shall he trick the Law of his being, which shall shatter all his selfish makeshifts and excuses for God-thought and God-life.

If he will but quarry the mine of his own Soul, he shall find there the central Hock on which to build in safety.

* * * * *
Thy sins are not thyself, they are not any part of thyself; they are diseases which thou hast come to lore.
* * * * *
It is nothing to thee that thy neighbours should speak falsely of thee, but it is much to thee that thou shouldst resist him, and seek to justify thyself, for by so doing thou givest life and vitality to thy neighbour’s falseness, so that thou art injured and distressed, by thy passionate resistance thou galvanizest into life and receive into thyself the enemy’s wrong thought.

He who says “I have tried Meekness, and it has failed” has not tried Meekness.
It cannot be tried as an experiment.
It is only arrived at by unreserved self-sacrifice.

* * * * *
The unrighteous man is vulnerable at almost every point; he is continually suffering (as he imagines) at the hands of others.

* * * * *
I laugh and laugh as I see plants, animals, men all dancing like iron-filings under the magnet of my Hypnotizing Maya.

* * * * *
Death is inevitable: why not select death in life? Children when they first taste a mango, cannot stop eating. Such is the effect of death-in-life.