Atmanam Viddhi | Know Thyself

1. There is naught else than Him; yet, this universe is not his real nature. He is not the objective world, for He is of the nature of nonobjective consciousness. And though He is devoid of the distinction of the knower, knowledge and the known, He is nevertheless always the knower,—that Hari, the destroyer of the darkness of samsâra, I praise. 2. Knowledge cannot spring up by any other means than enquiry, just as the perception of things is impossible without light. 3. He who thinks "I am the body" remains, alas! in ignorance, as also he who thinks "this body is mine", as if he were always looking at an earthen vessel belonging to him. 4. A dream becomes unreal in the waking state; nor does the waking state exist in dream. Both dream and waking are absent in sleep,and sleep too is absent in dream and in waking. 5. Thus all the three states are unreal, being produced by the three qualities. The Eternal is the witness of these three states, beyond the t

Lectures from Colombo to Almora (1897) is a book of Swami Vivekananda based on his various lectures. After visiting the West, Vivekananda reached Colombo, British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) on 15 January 1897. Upon Vivekananda's arrival in South India, a forty-feet high monument was built by the king of Ramnad on the spot where he landed to celebrate his achievements at the West. He reached Calcutta via Madras on 20 January 1897. Then Vivekananda travelled extensively and visited many Indian states. On 19 June (1897) he reached Almora. The lectures delivered by him in this period were compiled into the book Lectures from Colombo to Almora. The book contains reports of his 17 lectures. [Wikipedia] 1. Religion does not rest in book. 2. Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti(He is one, whom the sages declared by various names. ) 3. We are the effects, and we are the causes. We are free therefore. 4. We cannot understand God in our scriptures without knowing soul. 5. Souls are

Vedanta Philosophy: An address before the Graduate Philosophical Society is a lecture given by Swami Vivekananda on 25 March 1896 at the Graduate Philosophical Society of Harvard University. After this lecture, the university offered Vivekananda the chair of Eastern Philosophy. [Wikipedia] Here are the great words from this book. 1. All the Vedantists agree on three points. They believe in God, in the Vedas as revealed, and in cycles. 2. The belief about cycles is as follows: All matter throughout the universe is the outcome of one primal matter called Âkâsha; and all force, whether gravitation, attraction or repulsion, or life, is the outcome of one primal force called Prâna. Prâna acting on Âkâsha is creating or projecting the universe. 3. At the beginning of a cycle, Âkâsha is motionless, unmanifested. Then Prâna begins to act, more and more, creating grosser and grosser forms out of Âkâsha — plants, animals, men, stars, and so on. 4. Now there is somethin