Conquer Yourself

The Three Tests of Love

Have Faith in Ourselves First

Cheerfulness and Spirituality

How to Do Good:

The Practice of Karma Yoga

Other Writings of Interest:

By Swami Vivekananda

Our best work is done, our greatest influence is exerted, when we are without thought of self. All great geniuses know this. Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act, and do nothing ourselves.

Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces, we can only see the results. Put out self, lose it, forget it; just let God work, it is His business. We have nothing to do but stand aside and let God work. The more we go away, the more God comes in. Get rid of the little "I", and let only the great "I" live.

Conquer yourself, and the whole universe is yours. Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will. To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all—living in the body, but not of it. This rascal ego must be obliterated. Bless men when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing you; they can only hurt themselves. Go where people hate you, let them thrash the ego out of you, and you will get nearer to the Lord.

By Swami Vivekananda

Love we hear spoken of everywhere. Everyone says love God. People do not know what love is. If they did, they would not talk so lightly about it . . . The world is full of the talk of love, but it is hard to love. Where is love? How do you know that there is love?

The first test of love is that it knows no bargain. So long as you see a man love another to get something, you may know that it is shopkeeper's love. Wherever there is any question of buying and selling, it is no longer love. So when any man is praying to God: "Give me this and give me that," it is not love. How can it be? I offer you a prayer and you give me something in return; that is what it is, mere shop-keeping.

The second test is that love knows no fear. How can there be any fright in love? Does the lamb love the lion? the mouse the cat? the slave the master? Slaves sometimes simulate love. But is it love? Where do you ever see love and fear? It is always a sham. So long as man thinks of God as sitting above the clouds with a reward in one hand and punishment in the other, there can be no love . . . It is the outside people who have never tasted the love of God that fear him and quake all their lives before him.

The third is a still higher test. Love is always the highest ideal. The strongest and most attractive human love is that between man and woman, and therefore that language was used in expressing the deepest devotion. The madness of this human love is the faintest echo of the mad love of the saints for God.

(Excerpted from Karma and Bhakti Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda) US paperback $12.50, also

Religion of Love by Swami Vivekananda, paperback $3.95

By Swami Vivekananda

The idea of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure that a very large portions of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves.

Born with the consciousness that they were to be great, they became great.

Let a person go down as low as possible—there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself. But it is better for us that we should know it from the very first. Why should we have all these bitter experiences in order to gain faith in ourselves?

The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself. But it is not selfish faith, because the Vedanta, again, is the doctrine of oneness. It means faith in all, because you are all. Love for yourselves means love for all, love for animals, love for everything, for you are all one. It is the great faith which will make the world better. I am sure of that. He is the highest man who can say with truth, "I know all about myself."

Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power an blessedness.

(excerpted from Vivekananda: The Yogas and other Works, US hardback $29.50

and Practical Vedanta, by Swami Vivekananda, paperback $2.50

By Swami Vivekananda

In the Western world the idea of a religious man is that he never smiles, that a dark cloud must always hang over his face, which again must be long-drawn with the jaws almost collapsed.

People with emaciated bodies and long faces are fit subjects for the physician, they are not Yogis. It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties. And this, the hardest task of all, the cutting of our way out of the net of Maya, is the work reserved only for giant wills.

With the love of God will come, as a sure effect, the love of every one in the universe. The nearer we approach God, the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him. When the soul acquires the bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything. Our heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love. And when we reach even higher states of this love, all the little differences between the things of the world are entirely lost; man is seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal is seen no more as animal, but as God;

The conviction comes that nothing that happens is against us.

even the tiger is no more a tiger, but a manifestation of God. Thus in this intense state of Bhakti, worship is offered to every one, to every life, and to every being.

As a result of this kind of intense all-absorbing love, comes the feeling of perfect self-surrender, the conviction that nothing that happens is against us. Then the loving soul is able to say, if pain comes, "Welcome pain." If misery comes, it will say, "Welcome misery, you are also from the Beloved." If a serpent comes, it will say, "Welcome serpent." If death comes, such a Bhakta will welcome it with a smile. "Blessed am I that they all come to me; they are all welcome."

The Bhakta in this state of perfect resignation, arising out of intense love to God and to all that are His, ceases to distinguish between pleasure and pain in so far as they affect him. He does not know what it is to complain of pain or misery; and this kind of uncomplaining resignation to the will of God, who is all love, is indeed a worthier acquisition than all the glory of grand and heroic performances.

By Swami Vivekananda

We must do good; the desire to do good is the highest motive power we have, if we know all the time that it is a privilege to help others. Do not stand on a high pedestal and take five cents in your hand end say, "Here, my poor man," but be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.

Why should we have all

It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the giver. Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect. What can we do at best? Build a hospital, make roads, or erect charity asylums? One mighty wind in five minutes can break all your buildings up. What shall we do then? One volcanic eruption may sweep away all our roads and hospitals and cities and buildings.

Let us give up all this foolish talk of doing good to the world. It is not waiting for your or my help; yet we must work and constantly do good, because it is a blessing to ourselves. That is the only way wecan become perfect. No beggar who we have helped has ever owed a single cent to us; we owe everything to him, because he has allowed us to exercise our charity on him. We think that we have helped someone and expect him to thank us, and because he does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do?

Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God.

(excerpted from Karma and Bhakti Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. US paperback $12.50)

I know the difficulties. Tremendous they are, and ninety per cent of us become discouraged and lose heart, and in our turn, often become pessimists and cease to believe in sincerity, love, and all that is grand and noble.

So we find men who in the freshness of their lives have been forgiving, kind, simple, and guileless, become in old age lying masks of men. Their minds are a mass of intricacy. There may be a good deal of external policy, possibly. They are not hot-headed, they do not speak, but it would be better for them to do so; their hearts are dead and,

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therefore, they do not speak. They do not curse, not become angry; but it would be better for them to be able to be angry, a thousand times better, to be able to curse. They cannot. There is death in the heart, for cold hands have seized upon it, and it can no more act, even to utter a curse, even to use a harsh word. We must learn that nothing happens to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.

All this we have to avoid: therefore I say, we require super-divine power. Superhuman power is not strong enough. Super-divine strength is the only way, the one way out. By it alone we can pass through all these intricacies, through these showers of miseries, unscathed. We may be cut to pieces, torn asunder, yet our hearts must grow nobler and nobler all the time.

It is very difficult, but we can overcome the difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it. I have just said, no disease can come to me until the body is ready; it does not depend alone on the germs, but upon a certain predisposition which is already in the body.

We get only that for which we are fitted. Let us give up our pride and understand this, that never is misery undeserved. There never has been a blow undeserved. Analyze yourselves and you will find that every blow you have received came to you because you prepared yourselves for it. You did half, and the external world did the other half: that is how the blow came. That will sober us down.

At the same time, from this very analysis will come a note of hope, and the note of hope is: "I have no control of the external world, but that which is in me and nearer unto me, my own world, is in my control. If the two together are required to make a failure, if the two together are necessary to give me a blow, I will not contribute the one which is in my keeping. If I get real control of myself, the blow will never come."

(excerpted from Work and Its Secret, by Swami Vivekananda, paperback $1.00)

By Swami Vivekananda

This is the one question I put to every man, woman, or child, when they are in physical, mental, or spiritual training. Are you strong? Do you feel strength?—for I know it is truth alone that gives strength. I know that truth alone gives life, and nothing but going towards reality will make us strong, and none will reach truth until he is strong.

in everything.

Every system, therefore, which weakens the mind, makes one superstitious, makes one mope, makes one desire all sorts of wild impossibilities, mysteries, and superstitions, I do not like, because its effect is dangerous. Such systems never bring any good; such things create morbidity in the mind, make it weak, so weak that in course of time it will be almost impossible to receive truth or live up to it.

Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannized over by the rich. Strength is the medicine that the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned; and it is the medicine that sinners must have when tyrannized over by other sinners; and nothing makes us so moral as this idea of monism. Nothing makes us work so well at our best and highest as when all the responsibility is thrown upon ourselves.

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If a man with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have such an ideal. And this ideal we must hear about as much as we can, till it enters into our hearts, into our brains, into our very veins, until it tingles in every drop of our blood and permeates every pore in our body. We must meditate upon it. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of the fullness of the heart the hand works too.

It is though which is the propelling force in us. Fill the mind with the highest thoughts, hear them day after day, think them month after month. Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow—never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. The ideal of man is to see God in everything. But if you cannot see Him in everything, see Him in one thing, in that thing which you like best, and then see Him in another. So on you can go. There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

(excerpted from Jnana Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda, US paperback $12.50

and Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works, US hardback $29.50)

By Swami Vivekananda

We must take up the study of the super-conscious state just as any other science. On reason we have to lay our foundation, we must follow reason as far as it leads, and when reason fails, reason itself will show us the way to the highest plane.

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When you hear a man say "I am inspired" and then talk irrationally, reject it.

Furthermore (and- this is a most vital point to understand) inspiration is as much in every man's nature as it was in that of the ancient prophets. These prophets were not unique; they were men as you or I.

The very fact that one man ever reached that state, proves that it is possible for every man to do so. Not only is it possible, but every man must, eventually, get to that state, and that is religion. Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth, until we experience it ourselves.

(excerpted from Raja Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda, US paperback $12.50)

by Swami Vivekananda

Physical weakness is the cause of at least one-third of our miseries. We are lazy. We speak of many things parrot-like but never do them. Speaking and not doing has become a habit with us.

What is the cause? Physical weakness. A weak brain is not able to do anything. We must strengthen it. First of all our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards.

Be strong, my young friends, that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Gita.

how to knock.

You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty genius and the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman, when your body stands firm on your feet and you feel yourselves as men.

The end of all education, all training, should be man-making. What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion, even if it means going down to the bottom of the ocean, meeting death face to face.

Ninety per cent of thought force is wasted by the ordinary human being and therefore he is constantly committing blunders. The trained man or mind never makes a mistake.

All success in any line of work, in arts, music, etc., is the result of concentration. When the mind is concentrated and turned back on itself, all within us will be our servants, not our masters.

The Greeks applied their concentration to the external world and the result was perfection in art, literature, etc. The Hindu concentrated on the internal world, upon the unseen realms in the self and developed the science of yoga.

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.

In the present state of our body we are much distracted, and the mind is frittering away its energies upon a hundred things. How to check the thoughts and bring the mind under control is the subject of Raja yoga.

We only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say the world is bad and we are good. It can never be so. It is a terrible lie we tell ourselves.

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon any one outside, but be a man, stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true.

(excerpted from Education, by Swami Vivekananda, paperback $2.50)

by Christopher Isherwood

Religion! How that word still made me wince and grit my teeth with loathing! I had declared myself an atheist at the age of twenty and now, at nearly thirty-five, I hadn't changed my opinion. I had no expectation that I should ever do so. Religion, I was prepared to tell all and sundry, was evil, superstitious reactionary nonsense, and those who propagated it were enemies of progress and of mankind.

But what did I mean by "religion"? By "religion" I meant the Christian religion as I had encountered it through the Church of England, into which I had been baptized as a baby and confirmed as a teen-age boy. I regarded the Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems as picturesque heathens merely. I didn't think of them as being "religious" at all.

I hated Christianity—the kind of Christianity I had been taught— because it was dualistic. God, high in heaven, ruled with grim justice over us, his sinful and brutish subjects, here below. He was good. We were bad. We were so bad that we crucified Jesus his son, whom he had sent down to live amongst us. For this crime, committed nearly two thousand years ago, each new generation had to beg forgiveness. If we begged hard enough and were sincerely sorry, we might be sent to purgatory and even eventually let into heaven, instead of being thrown into hell where we by rights belonged.

Who—I furiously exclaimed— wouldn't rebel against the concept of such a God? Who wouldn't abhor his tyranny? Who wouldn't denounce the cruel unfairness of this test he had set us: one short human life in which to earn salvation or damnation? Who wouldn't detest his Son, who had come to us—like a vice squad officer bent on entrapment—wearing a hypocritical mask of meekness in order to tempt us to murder him? Such were the questions I asked; and my answer was that only slaves could accept such a religion. In the Christian hell one could expect to meet every honest and courageous man or woman who had ever lived. If hell existed, then I for one would be proud to be damned.

But hell, I added, didn't exist. And neither did God, with his laws and his punishments. The whole thing was, only too obviously, a fiction invented by schoolmasters and policemen; a projection of their own morbid guilt-complexes and life-hatred.

When I looked at the Christians around me, I chose to see them as a collection of dreary canting hypocrites, missionaries of ignorance and reaction, who opposed all social reform lest it should endanger the status and privileges of their Church, and all personal freedom lest the individual should discover for himself that the "don'ts" they preached were unnecessary.

I loathed their gravity, their humility, their lack of humor, their special tone when speaking of their God. I believed, or pretended to believe, that every Christian was secretly longing to indulge in forbidden pleasures, and that he was only prevented from doing so by his cowardice, ugliness or impotence. I delighted in stories which told of clergymen being seduced, and monks or nuns carrying on clandestine love affairs. My malice against them knew no bounds. At the same time, I proudly declared that I myself needed no religion to keep me moral, according to my own standards. I tried to behave more or less decently because I freely chose to follow the advice of my own conscience; I didn't need the Ten Commandments to nudge me, or the fear of an absurd mediaeval nightmare called Hell.

I proudly declared that I needed no religion to keep me moral

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by Swami Abhedananda

The law of karma says that every action must be followed by a reaction of a similar nature. If I strike a blow on the table, the table will react upon me with a similar force. If I strike harder, I shall receive a harder blow in return.

Thus every good act brings its own reward and every wrong act brings its own punishment. When a robber robs another, he robs himself (i.e. something will be in time, in one life or another, stolen from him).

The doctrine of karma alone can explain the mysterious problem of good and evil and reconcile man to the terrible and apparent injustice of life. In the face of this universal law, there is no room for predestination and grace . . . The law of karma is inevitable and every creature is bound to face this law. But escape is possible through the practice of Karma Yoga.

Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

OM is the most ancient word for God that has come down to us through the ages. It has been used by countless millions of worshipers—always in the most universal sense; implying no special attributes, referring to no one particular deity. If such use can confer sanctity, then OM is the most sacred word of all.

Usually we are in a state of reverie—a mental fog.

But what really matters is that we should appreciate the power of the Word in our spiritual life; and this appreciation can only come through practical experience. People who have never tried the practice of repeating the name of God are apt to scoff at it: it seems to them so empty, so mechanical. "Just repeating the same word over and over!" they exclaim scornfully. "What possible good can that do?"

The truth is that we are all inclined to flatter ourselves—despite our daily experience to the contrary—that we spend our time thinking logical, consecutive thoughts. In fact, most of us do no such thing. Consecutive thought about any one problem occupies a very small proportion of our waking hours.

More usually, we are in a state of reverie—a mental fog of disconnected sense-impressions, irrelevant memories, nonsensical scraps of sentences from books and newspapers, little darting fears and resentments, physical sensations of discomfort, excitement or ease. If, at any given moment, we could take twenty human minds and inspect their workings, we should probably find one, or at most two, which were functioning rationally. The remaining eighteen or nineteen minds would look more like this: "Ink-bottle. That time I saw Roosevelt. In love with the night mysterious. Reds veto Pact. Jimmy's trying to get my job. Mary says I'm fat. Big toe hurts. Soup good...." etc., etc.

Because we do nothing to control this reverie, it is largely conditioned by external circumstances. The weather is cloudy, so our mood is sad. The sun comes out; our mood brightens. Insects begin to buzz around us, and we turn irritable and nervous. Often, it is as simple as that.

But now, if we introduce into this reverie the repetition of the name of God, we shall find that we can control our moods, despite the interference of the outside world. We are always, anyhow, repeating words in our minds—the name of a friend or an enemy, the name of an anxiety, the name of a desired object—and each of these words is surrounded by its own mental climate. Try saying "war," or "cancer," or "money," ten thousand times, and you will find that your whole mood has been changed and colored by the associations connected with that word. Similarly, the name of God will change the climate of your mind.

Gradually, our confused reverie will give way to concentrated thought. We cannot long continue to repeat any word without beginning to think about the reality which it represents.

by Shankara. Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood

Who is thy wife?

Who is thy son?

The ways of this world are strange indeed.

Whose are thou?

Whence art thou come?

Vast is thy ignorance, my beloved.

Therefore ponder these things and worship the Lord.

Behold the folly of Man:

In childhood busy with his toys,

In youth bewitched by love,

In age bowed down with cares—

And always unmindful of the Lord!

The hours fly, the seasons roll, life ebbs,

But the breeze of hope blows continually in his heart.

Birth brings death, death brings rebirth:

This evil needs no proof.

Where then O Man, is thy happiness?

This life trembles in the balance Like water on a lotus-leaf—

And yet the sage can show us, in an instant,

How to bridge this sea of change.

Thy son may bring thee suffering,

Thy wealth is no assurance of heaven:

Therefore be not vain of thy wealth,

Or of thy family, or of thy youth—

All are fleeting, all must change.

Know this and be free.

Enter the joy of the Lord.