Swami Vivekananda
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When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away; who will then care for it? Freedom, Salvation, Nirvâna — all are thrown away; who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of divine love? "Lord, I do not want wealth, nor friends, nor beauty, nor learning, nor even freedo
Complete books online by the Swami
It is impossible to express the nature of this supreme and absolute ideal of love in human language. Even the highest flight of human imagination is incapable of comprehending it in all its infinite perfection and beauty. Nevertheless, the followers of the religion of love, in its higher as well
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
The first group of religious ideas that we see coming up--I mean recognised religious ideas, and not the very low ideas, which do not deserve the name of religion--all include the idea of inspiration and revealed books and so forth. The first group of religious ideas starts with th
Complete books online by the Swami
What is the ideal of the lover who has quite passed beyond the idea of selfishness, of bartering and bargaining, and who knows no fear? Even to the great God such a man will say, "I will give You my all, and I do not want anything from You; indeed there is nothing that I can call my own." When a
Complete books online by the Swami
We may represent love as a triangle, each of the angles of which corresponds to one of its inseparable characteristics. There can be no triangle without all its three angles; and there can be no true love without its three following characteristics. The first angle of our triangle of love is tha
Complete books online by the Swami
Chapter 6: The higher knowledge and the higher love are one to the true lover
Complete books online by the Swami
We say, "That day is indeed a bad day on which you do not hear the name of the Lord, but a cloudy day is not a bad day at all." Yâjnavalkya was a great sage. You know, the Shastras in India enjoin that every man should give up the world when he becomes old. So Yajnavalkya said to his wife, "My b
Complete books online by the Swami
How can we love the Vyashti, the particular, without first loving the Samashti, the universal? God is the Samashti, the generalised and the abstract universal whole; and the universe that we see is the Vyashti, the particularised thing. To love the whole universe is possible only by way of lovin
Complete books online by the Swami
Here are some of the forms in which love manifests itself. First there is reverence. Why do people show reverence to temples and holy places? Because He is worshipped there, and His presence is associated with all such places. Why do people in every country pay reverence to teachers of religion?
Complete books online by the Swami
Chapter 3: The naturalness of Bhakti-Yoga and its central secret
Jnana Yoga by Swami Vivekananda
Many of you have read Max Muller's celebrated book, Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy, and some of you may, perhaps, have read, in German, Professor Deussen's book on the same philosophy. In what is being written and taught in the West about the religious thought of India, o
RajaYoga in brief
We have taken a cursory view of the different steps in Raja-Yoga, except the finer ones, the training in concentration, which is the goal, to which Raja-Yoga will lead us. We see, as human beings, that all our knowledge which is called rational is referred to consciousness. My cons