Adwait Vidanta - Swami Vivekanand

ADVAITA VEDANTA

1. God exists; but He is not the man sitting upon a cloud. He is Pure Spirit. Where does He reside? Nearer to you than your very self. He is the Soul. When you think of Him as someone separate from yourself, you do not know Him. He is you yourself. (VIII:101)

2. It is the God within your own self that is propelling you to seek for Him, to realize Him. After long searches here and there, in temples and in churches, in earths and in heavens, at last you come back, completing the circle from where you started, to your own soul and find that He for whom you have been seeking all over the world is nearest of the near, is your own Self, the reality of your life, body, and soul. That is your own nature. (II:81–82)

3. It is impossible to find God outside of ourselves. Our own souls contribute all the divinity that is outside of us. We are the greatest temple. The objectification is only a faint imitation of what we see within ourselves. (VII:59)

4. The ancient sages penetrated deeper and deeper until they found that in the innermost core of the human soul is the center of the whole universe. (II:157)

5. That Soul which is the universal is you; you are not a part but the whole of It. You are the whole of God. (II:414)

6. Though the atom is invisible, unthinkable, yet in it are the whole power and potency of the universe. That is exactly what the Vedantist says of Atman. (VII:50)

7. The Atman neither comes nor goes. It has neither birth nor death. You are all omnipresent, you are the Atman. You are at this moment in heaven and in the darkest places too. You are everywhere. Where are you not? Therefore how can you go anywhere? These comings and goings are all fictions—the Atman can never come nor go. (IX:241)

8. The flower, the essence of the Vedas, is that the Self in each of us is Brahman. (VII:34)

9. The Vedas cannot show you Brahman, you are That already; they can only help to take away the veil that hides the truth from our eyes. (VII:46)

10. In one word, this ideal [of Vedanta] is that you are divine, “Thou art That.” This is the
essence of Vedanta. The soul was never born and will never die. (II:294)

11. The theory of incarnation is the first link in the chain of ideas leading to the recognition of
the oneness of God and man. God appearing first in one human form, then re-appearing
at different times in other human forms, is at last recognized as being in every human
form, or in all men. (VII:100)

12. We are in reality that Infinite Being, and our personalities represent so many channels through which this Infinite Reality is manifesting Itself. (II:339)

13. I see clear as daylight that there is the one Brahman in all, in them [untouchables] and me— one Shakti dwells in all. The only difference is of manifestation. (VII:246)

14. Hate not the most abject sinner, look not to his exterior. Turn thy gaze inward, where resides the Paramatman. (IV:110)

15. When the soul has realized that everything is full of the Lord, of Brahman, it will not care whether it goes to heaven, or hell, or anywhere else; whether it be born again on this earth or in heaven. These things have ceased to have any meaning to that soul, because every place is the same, every place is the temple of the Lord. (II:318)

16. No life will be a failure; there is no such thing as failure in the universe. A hundred times man will hurt himself, a thousand times he will tumble, but in the end he will realize that he is God. (I:416)

17. Only be sincere; and if you are sincere, says Vedantism, you are sure to be brought to the goal. None will be left. Your heart, which contains all truth, will unfold itself chapter after chapter, till you know the last truth, that “I and my Father are one.” (III:536–537)

18. Behind everything the same divinity is existing, and out of this comes the basis of morality. Do not injure another. Love everyone as your own self, because the whole universe is one. In injuring another, I am injuring myself; in loving another, I am loving myself. (I:364)

19. Wherever there has been expansion in love or progress in well-being, of individuals or numbers, it has been through the perception, realization, and the practicalization of the Eternal Truth— THE ONENESS OF ALL BEINGS. (V:435)

20. “Rise thou effulgent one, rise thou who art always pure, rise thou birthless and deathless, rise almighty, and manifest thy true nature. These little manifestations do not befit thee. This is the highest prayer that the Advaita teaches. (II:357)