Swami Vivekananda

[Guest guest]

5.

 

41. Education is not the amount of information that is put into your

brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We msut have

life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas.

 

42. Lay down your comforts, your pleausres, your names, fame or

position, nay even your lives, and make a bridge of human chains

over which millions will cross this ocean of life. Bring all the

forces of good together. Do not care under what banner you march.

Do not care what be your colour -- green, blue or red -- but mix all

the colours up and produce that intense glow of wh ite, the colour

of love. Ours is to work.

 

43. In India, there are two great evils. Trampling on the women, and

grinding the poor through caste restrictions.

 

44. ... forget not -- that the lower classes, the ignorant, the

poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper, are thy flesh and

blood, they brothers. Thou brave one, be bold, take courage, be

proud that thou art an Indian, and proudly proclaim -- 'I am an

Indian -- every Indian is my brother'. Say, 'The ignorant Indian,

the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the pariah

Indian, is my brother.' ... Say -- brother: 'The soil of India is my

highest heaven, the good of India is my good and rpeat and pray day

and night,.... O Thou Mother of Strength, take away my weakness,

take away my unmanliness, and make me a man!

 

45. Build up your character and manifest your REal Nature, the

Effulgent, the Resplendent, the Ever Pure, and call it up in

everyone that you see.... Our only work is to arouse this knowledge

in our fellow-beings. We see that they too are the same pure self.

Only they do not know it; we must help them to rouse up their

infinite nature.

 

46. The solution is not by bringing down the higher, but by raising

the lower up to the level of the higher. And that is the line of

work that is found in all our books.

 

47. When the life-blood is strong and pure, no disease germ can live

in that body. Our life-blood is spirituality. If it flows clear, if

it flows strong and pure and vigorous, everything is right;

political, social, any other material defects, even the poverty of

the land, will all be coured if that blood is pure.

 

48. Women will work out their own destinies -- much better, too,

than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come

because men undertook to shape the destiny of women.

 

49. I consider that the great national sin is the neglect of the

masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of

politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are once

more well educated, well fed, and well cared for.

 

50. Remember that the nation lives in the cottage. But, alas! nobody

ever did anything for them. ... Can you raise them?Can you give th

em back their lost individuality without making them lose their

innate spiritual nature? ...This is to be done and we will do it.

 

Contd....