Swami Vivekananda - Mind Quotes

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First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.

Swami Vivekananda
Never allow weakness to overtake your mind. Remember Mahavira, remember the Divine Mother! And you will see that all weakness, all cowardice will vanish at once.

Swami Vivekananda
As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.

Swami Vivekananda
The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

Swami Vivekananda
Go on saying, I am free. Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, I am bound. Dehypnotize the whole thing.

Swami Vivekananda
Religion is the peculiarity of the growth of the Indian mind.

Swami Vivekananda
Strength is the sign of vigor, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, and the sign of everything that is good. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, strength in the hand.

Swami Vivekananda
Bear in mind, my children, that only cowards and those who are weak commit sin and tell lies. The brave are always moral. Try to be moral, try to be brave, try to be sympathising.

Swami Vivekananda
Know that the mind which is born to succeed joins itself to a determined will and perseveres.

Swami Vivekananda
Renounce and give up. What did Christ say? "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Again and again did he preach renunciation as the only way to perfection. There comes a time when the mind awakes from this long and dreary dream-the child gives up its play and wants to go back to its mother. Renunciation is not asceticism. Are all beggars Christ? Poverty is not a synonym for holiness; often the reverse.

Swami Vivekananda
Meditation, you know, comes by a process imagination. You go through all these processes purification of the elements - making the one melt the other, that into the next higher, that into mind, that into spirit, and then you are spirit.

Swami Vivekananda
According to us, there are three things in the makeup of man. There is the body, there is the mind, and there is the soul.

Swami Vivekananda
The mind in its foolishness thinks that it is working in this body. Why should I be bound by one system of nerves, and put the Ego only in one body, if the mind is omnipresent? There is no reason why I should.[Source]
The root of that degeneration is egotism - to think that one is just as great as any other, indeed!

Swami Vivekananda
If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control, to attain to that consciousness from which you will be able to study the mind and remain unmoved by any of its wild gyrations. Otherwise the facts observed will not be reliable; they will not apply to all people and therefore will not be truly facts or data at all.

Swami Vivekananda
When a man is perfect, he sees perfection in others. When he sees imperfection, it is his own mind projecting itself.

Swami Vivekananda
That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.

Swami Vivekananda
Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality.

Swami Vivekananda
If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame.

Swami Vivekananda
Christ said, "Resist not evil", and we do not understand it until we discover that it is not only moral but actually the best policy, for anger is loss of energy to the man who displays it. You should not allow your minds to come into those brain-combinations of anger and hatred.

Swami Vivekananda
The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.

Swami Vivekananda
Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.

Swami Vivekananda
The calm man is not the man who is dull. You must not mistake Sattva for dullness or laziness. The calm man is the one who has control over the mind waves. Activity is the manifestation of inferior strength, calmness, of the superior.

Swami Vivekananda
Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.

Swami Vivekananda
It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

Swami Vivekananda
The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

Swami Vivekananda
Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. His breath stops, but he is not dead.

Swami Vivekananda
Truth will never come into our minds so long as there will remain the faintest shadow of Ahamkâra (egotism). All of you should try to root out this devil from your heart. Complete self-surrender is the only way to spiritual illumination.

Swami Vivekananda
Man's free agency is not of the mind, for that is bound. There is no freedom there.

Swami Vivekananda
To the Indian mind there is nothing higher than religious ideals, that this is the keynote of Indian life.

Swami Vivekananda
The body and mind are continually changing, and are, in fact, only names of series of changeful phenomena, like rivers whose waters are in a constant state of flux, yet presenting the appearance of unbroken streams. Every particle in this body is continually changing; no one has the same body for many minutes together, and yet we think of it as the same body.

Swami Vivekananda