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- It is good to live in the company of holy
men now and then. The
disease of worldliness has become chronic in man. It is mitigated,
to a great extent, in holy company.
- What will a man gain by knowing many
scriptures? The one thing
needful is to know how to cross the river of the world. God alone is
real, and all else illusory.
- How much of the scriptures can you read?
What will you gain by mere reasoning? Try to realize God before
anything else. Have faith in the guru's words, and work. If you have
no guru, then pray to God with a longing heart. He will let you know
what He is like.
- God is our Inner Controller. Pray to Him
with a pure and guileless heart. He will explain everything to you.
Give up egotism and take refuge in Him. You will realize everything.
- The yogi seeks to realize the Paramatman,
the Supreme Soul. His ideal is the union of the embodied soul and
the Supreme Soul. He withdraws his mind from sense-objects and tries
to concentrate it on the Paramatman. Therefore, during the first
stage of his spiritual discipline, he retires into solitude and with
undivided attention practises meditation in a fixed posture.
- It is all a question of the mind. Bondage
and liberation are of the mind alone. The mind will take the colour
you dye it with. It is like white clothes just returned from the
laundry. If you dip them in red dye, they will be red. If you dip
them in blue or green, they will be blue or green. They will take
only the colour you dip them in, whatever it may be. Haven't you
noticed that, if you read a little English, you at once begin to
utter English words: Foot fut it mit?8 Then you put on boots and
whistle a tune, and so on. It all goes together. Or, if a scholar
studies Sanskrit, he will at once rattle off Sanskrit verses. If you
are in bad company, then you will talk and think like your
companions. On the other hand, when you are in the company of
devotees, you will think and talk only of God.
- One cannot get true feeling about God from
the study of books. This
feeling is something very different from book-learning. Books,
scriptures, and science appear as mere dirt and straw after the
realization of God.
- He who has realized God has obtained the
fruit of Immortality—not a common fruit like a gourd or a pumpkin.
He is free from rebirth. He is not born anywhere—on earth, in the
solar world, or in the lunar world.
- God-vision is necessary. Now the question
is, how can one get it? Intense renunciation is the means. A man
should have such intense yearning for God.
- What will it avail a man to have mere
scholarship? A pundit may have studied many scriptures, he may
recite many sacred texts, but if he is still attached to the world
and if inwardly he loves 'woman and gold', then he has not
assimilated the contents of the scriptures. For such a man the study
of scriptures is futile. The almanac forecasts the rainfall for the
year. You may squeeze the book, but you won't get a drop of
water—not even a single drop.
Sri Ramakrishna Quotes -
Quotes2,
Quotes3,
Quotes4,
Quotes5,
Quotes6,
Quotes7,
Quotes8,
Quotes9,
Quotes10,
Quotes12 |
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