Ramakrishna

"The sun can give heat and light to the whole world, but he cannot do so when the clouds shut out his rays. Similarly as long as egotism veils the heart, God cannot shine upon it. (99)"

"The vanities of all others may gradually die out, but the vanity of a saint regarding his sainthood is hard indeed to wear away. (110)"

"If you feel proud, let it be in the thought that you are the servant of God, the son of God. Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him. (124)"

"As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge. (132)"

"That knowledge which purifies the mind and heart alone is true Knowledge, all else is only a negation of Knowledge. (138)"

"Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action. (152)"

"The nearer you come to God, the less you are disposed to questioning and reasoning. When you actually attain Him, when you behold Him as the reality, then all noise, all disputations, come to an end. (153)"

"Only two kinds of people can attain to self-knowledge: those who are not encumbered at all with learning, that is to say, whose minds are not over-crowded with thoughts borrowed from others; and those who, after studying all the scriptures and sciences, have come to realize that they know nothing. (162)"

"Two friends went into an orchard. One of them possessing much worldly wisdom, immediately began to count the mango trees there and the number of mangoes each tree bore, and to estimate what might be the approximate value of the whole orchard. His companion went to the owner, made friends with him, and then, quietly going into a tree, began at his host's desire to pluck the fruits and eat them. Whom do you consider to be the wiser of the two? Eat mangoes. It will satisfy your hunger. What is the good of counting the trees and leaves and making calculations? The vain man of intellect busies himself with finding out the "why" and "wherefore" of creation, while the humble man of wisdom makes friends with the Creator and enjoys His gift of supreme bliss. (164)"

"Do you, O preacher, carry the badge of authority? The humblest servant of the king, authorized by him, is heard with awe and respect, and can quell a riot by showing his badge ; so must you, O preacher, first, obtain your commission and inspiration from God Himself. So long as you do not have this badge of Divine inspiration, you may preach all your life, but it will be mere waste of breath. (168)"

"When the jar is full, it does not make noise any more. So t}ie man of realization too does not talk much. But what then about Narada and others? Yes; Narada, Sukadeva and a few others like them came down several steps after the attainment of Samadhi, and out of mercy and love they taught mankind. (179)"

"As a little boy or girl can have no idea of conjugal pleasure, even so a worldly man cannot at all comprehend the ecstasy of Divine communion. (193)"

"The young bamboo can be easily bent, but the full grown bamboo breaks when it is bent with force. It is easy to bend the young heart towards God, but the untrained heart of the old escapes the hold whenever it is so drawn. (233)"

"The parrot cannot be taught to sing when the vibrating membrane in its throat has hardened too much due to age. It must be taught to sing while young, before the collar line appears on its neck. So in old age it is difficult to learn how to fix the mind on God, but it can be easily learnt in youth. (234)"

"A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in boat. A spiritual aspirant may live in the world, but the world should not live within him. (266)"

"As a boy holding to a post or a pillar whirls about it with headlong speed without any fear or falling, so perform your worldly duties, fixing your hold firmly upon God, and you will be free from danger. (283)"

"If a white cloth is stained even with a small spot, the stain appears very ugly indeed. So the smallest fault of a holy man becomes painfully prominent. (299)"

"Forgiveness is the true nature of the ascetic. (307)"

"Honour both spirit and form, the sentiment within as well as the symbol without. (308)"

"As a toy fruit or a toy elephant reminds one of the real fruit and the living animal, so do the images that are worshipped remind one of the God who is formless and eternal.(325)"

"Visit not miracle-mongers and those who exhibit occult powers. These men are stragglers from the path of Truth. Their minds have become entangled in psychic powers, which are like veritable meshes in the way of the pilgrim to Brahman. Beware of these powers, and desire them not. (372)"

"A young plant should always be protected against goats and cows and the mischief of little urchins, by means of a fence. But when it becomes a big tree, a flock of goats or a herd of cows can freely find shelter under its spreading boughs and fill their stomachs with their leaves. So when your faith is yet in its infancy, you should protect it from the evil influences of bad company. But when you grow strong in faith, no worldliness or evil inclination will dare approach your holy presence; and many who are wicked will become godly through their holy contact with you. (387)"

"One does not care for the cage when the bird has flown away from it. and when the bird of life flies away, no one cares for the body left behind. (396)"

"In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms — pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc., — but all are made of the same clay. So God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects. (458)"

"Unless one always speaks the truth, one cannot find God Who is the soul of truth. (531)"

"It is very pleasant to scratch an itching ring-worm, but the sensation one gets afterwards is very painful and intolerable. In the same way the pleasures of this world are very attractive in the beginning, but their consequences are terrible to contemplate and hard to endure. (548)"

"To drink pure water from a shallow pond one should gently take the water from the surface without disturbing the pond in the least. If it is disturbed, the sediments rise up and make the whole water muddy. If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices, without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled. (580)"

"The goal can never be reached unless a man makes his mind strong, and firmly resolves that he must realise God in this very birth, nay, this very moment. (626)"

"Sunlight is one and the same wherever it falls; but only a bright surface like that of water, or of a mirror reflects it fully. So is the light Divine. It falls equally and impartially on all hearts, but the pure and pious hearts of holy men receive and reflect that light well. (649)"

"Who is whose Guru? God alone is the guide and Guru of the universe. (687)"

"A thief enters a dark room and feels the various articles therein. He lays his hands upon a table perhaps, and saying "Not this" passes on. Next he come upon some other article — a chair, perhaps — and again saying "Not this" continues his search, till, leaving article after article, he finally lays his hands on the box containing the treasure. Then he exclaims "It is here!" and there his search ends. Such, indeed is the search for Brahman. (733)"

"Brahman is beyond mind and speech, beyond concentration and meditation, beyond the knower, the known and knowledge, beyond even the conception of the real and unreal. In short, It is beyond all relativity. (840)"

"Right discrimination is of two kinds — analytical and synthetical. The first leads one from the phenomena to the Absolute Brahman, while by the second one knows how the Absolute Brahman appears as the universe. (862)"

"As the shell, the pith and the kernel of the fruit are all produced form one parent seed of the tree, so from the one Lord is produced the whole of creation, animate and inanimate, spiritual and material. (867)"

"When the head of a goat is severed from its body, the trunk struggles for some time, still showing signs of life. Similarly, though ahamkara (egotism) is slain in the perfect man, yet enough of its vitality is left to make him carry on the functions of physical life; but it is not sufficient to bind him again into the world. (949)"

"When the tail of the tadpole drops off, it can live both in water and on land. When the tail of delusive ignorance drops off from man, he becomes free. He can then live in God and the world equally well. (955)"

"With the divine Knowledge of Advaita (non-duality) in you, do whatever you wish; for then no evil can ever come out of you. (966)"

"Do yourself what you wish others to do. (1021)"

"Men are quick to praise and quick to blame; so pay no heed to what others speak of you. (1023)"

"As long as I live, so long do I learn. (1036)"

"A certain father had two sons. When they were old enough, they were admitted to the first stage of life (Brahmacharya), and placed under the care of a religious preceptor to study the Vedas. After a long time the boys returned home, having finished their studies. Their father asked them' if they had read the Vedanta. On their replying in the affirmative, he asked, “Well, tell me what is Brahman.’ The elder son, quoting the Vedas and other scriptures, replied: “O Father, It is beyond words and thought. It is so and so. I know it all.” And to support what he said, he again quoted Vedantic texts. “So you have known Brahman” said the father,“ you may go about your business. Then he asked the younger son the same quest ion. But the boy remained silent; not a word came out of his mouth, nor did he make any attempt to speak. At this the father replied : “Yes, my boy. You are right. Nothing can be predicated of the Absolute and the Unconditioned. No sooner do you talk of It than you state the Infinite in terms of the finite, the Absolute in terms of the relative, the Unconditioned in terms of the conditioned. Your silence is more eloquent than the recitation of a. hundred verses and the quoting of a hundred authorities. (1117)"

"Heaven sometimes speaks through the mouths of lunatics, drunkards and children. (1042)"

"The devil nevetf" enters the house wherein songs in praise of Hari are always sung. (1043)"

"His name is Intelligence (Chinmaya): His abode is Intelligence; and He, the Lord, is All-Intelligence. (1058)"

"First purify your heart. When the mind becomes pure, the Lord Himself comes and makes it His seat. No image of God can be set up in a dirty place. The eleven bats referred to above are the eleven senses (the five organs of knowledge, the five organs of action and the mind). First dive deep within your own self and get the gems lying hidden there. After that you can have everything else. First you have to enshrine Uddhava in the heart; then you can have enough of lecturing and preaching. (1392)"

"Sri Ramakrishna, as a silent force, influences the spiritual thought currents of our time. He is a figure of recent history and his life and teachings have not yet been obscured by loving legends and doubtful myths. Through his God-intoxicated life Sri Ramakrishna proved that the revelation of God takes place at all times and that God-realization is not the monopoly of any particular age, country, or people. In him, deepest spirituality and broadest catholicity stood side by side. The God-man of nineteenth-century India did not found any cult, nor did he show a new path to salvation. His message was his God-consciousness. When God-consciousness falls short, traditions become dogmatic and oppressive and religious teachings lose their transforming power. … The greatest contribution of Sri Ramakrishna to the modern world is his message of the harmony of religions. To Sri Ramakrishna all religions are the revelation of God in His diverse aspects to satisfy the manifold demands of human minds. Like different photographs of a building taken from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth from different standpoints. They are not contradictory but complementary."

"The basis of the Swami's claim is a story that Swami Vivekananda's guru Paramahansa Ramakrishna (1836-86) once, in 1866, dressed up as a Muslim and then continued his spiritual exercises until he had a vision; and likewise as a Christian in 1874. If at all true, these little experiments shouldn't be given too much weight, considering Ramakrishna's general habit of dressing up a little for devotional purposes, e.g. as a woman, to experience Krishna the lover through the eyes of His beloved Radha (not uncommon among Krishna devotees in Vrindavan); or hanging in trees to impersonate Hanuman, Rama's monkey helper. But is the story true? Ram Swarup finds that it is absent in the earliest recordings of Ramakrishna's own talks. It first appears in a biography written 25 years after Ramakrishna's death by Swami Saradananda (Sri Ramakrishna, the Great Master), who had known the Master only in the last two years of his life. Even then, mention (on just one page in a 1050-page volume) is only made of a vision of a luminous figure. The next biographer, Swami Nikhilananda, ventures to guess that the figure was 'perhaps Mohammed'... In subsequent versions, this guess became a dead certainty, and that 'vision of Mohammed' became the basis of the doctrine that he spent some time as a Muslim, and likewise as a Christian, and that he 'proved the truth' of those religions by attaining the highest yogic state on those occasions. As the alleged vision of Jesus was slightly more glorious than that of Mohammed, Ram Swarup sarcastically suggests new horizons to the 'equal truth of all religions' school: 'This difference could provide much scope for future disputants. One school may hold that while all prophets are equal, some are more equal than others.'"

"But what brought me into an intimate and living contact with this great mystic and bhakta and shakta and advaitin, was his Kathamrita. He had not used a single abstraction nor discussed any of the problems which pass as philosophy. His talks embodied expressions of a concrete consciousness which had dropped every trace of the dirt and dross and inertia which characterise what is known as normal human consciousness. The metaphors which sprang spontaneously from this purified consciousness were matchless in their aptness and illumined in a few words the knotted problems which many voluminous works had failed to solve. I was now having my first intimations of immortality towards which Kabir and Nanak and Sri Garibdas had inclined me earlier."

"Throughout his life Ramakrishna continued to use words and similes which struck his more sensitive hearers as shockingly crude. But even those who were shocked had to admit that in Ramakrishna's mouth, the words lost much of their offensiveness; for he used them with such innocence."

"Ramakrishna was completely simple and guileless. He told people whatever came into his mind, like a child. If he had ever been troubled by homosexual desires, if that had ever been a problem he'd have told everybody about them. … He was completely without hang-ups, talking about sex-roles, because his thoughts transcended physical love-making. He saw even the mating of two dogs on the street as an expression of the eternal male-female principle in the universe. I think that is always a sign of great spiritual enlightenment."