Sarani’s Reviews > The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda > Status Update

With every sense, every organ active, have you that tremendous peace so that nothing can disturb you? Standing on Market Street, waiting for the car with all the rush going on around you, are you in meditation — calm and peaceful? In the cave, are you intensely active there with all quiet about you? If you are, you are a Yogi, otherwise not.

"Lord Krishna is the most rounded man I know of, wonderfully developed equally in brain and heart and hand. My regard for him is for his perfect sanity. Every moment of his is alive with activity, as a gentleman, warrior, scholar, poet. This all-rounded and wonderful activity and combination of brain and heart you see in the Gita. Most wonderful heart, exquisite language, and nothing can approach it anywhere."

Nature does not manifest her laws bit by bit, an inch of gravitation today and another inch tomorrow. No, every law is complete. There is no evolution in law at all. It is given once and for ever.

That which is true must be infinite and eternal. That is the one test of truth. It never decays, it is always the same.

“That which is true must be infinite and eternal. That is the one test of truth. It never decays, it is always the same.”

A man journeying towards the sun, takes a photograph at each step. How different would be the first photo from the second and still more from the last, when he reaches the real sun! All these differing so widely, are true, only they are made to appear different by the changing conditions of time and space. This truth enabled Hindus to perceive the universal truth of all religions, inculcating the spirit of tolerance.

If I am God, then my soul is a temple of the Highest, and my every motion should be a worship — love for love's sake, duty for duty's sake, without hope of reward or fear of punishment. Thus my religion means expansion, and expansion means realisation and perception in the highest sense. Man is to become divine, realising the divine more and more from day to day in an endless progress.

If I’m in a dark room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter-I must light a match. No amount of grumbling, wailing will make our imperfect body more perfect. But the Vedanta teaches call forth your soul, show your divinity. Teach your children they’re divine, that religion is positive and not a negative nonsense; that it isn’t subject to groans under oppression but expansion and manifestation.

Udana is the name of the nerve current that governs the lungs and all the upper parts of the body, and when the Yogi is master of it, he becomes light in weight. He does not sink in water; he can walk on thorns and sword blades, and stand in fire, and can depart this life whenever he likes.

The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful. When a man is gloomy, that may be dyspepsia, but it is not religion. A pleasurable feeling is the nature of the Sattva. Everything is pleasurable to the Sâttvika man, and when this comes, know that you are progressing in Yoga. The strong, the well knit, the young, the healthy, the daring alone are fit to be Yogis.

Most of us make our minds like spoilt children, allowing them to do whatever they want. Therefore it is necessary that Kriya-yoga should be constantly practised, in order to gain control of the mind, and bring it into subjection.