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Thought for the Day for July
by Swami Krishnananda

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Months

  1. A Guru is one to whom we can open our heart wholly, and there should be no kind of hesitation or reservation in his case. This is because the Guru is not just a person in the world; he is a superior individual who has risen over individuality.
  2. There were great sages who were all established in the highest knowledge of the Universal Reality and yet looked like ordinary individuals doing nothing at all—though in fact, everything was done by them.
  3. Doubts on the path of sadhana indicate that the spirit of sadhana has not been properly grasped. When there is enough conviction about the correctness of the method adopted, sadhana quickly bears fruit.
  4. Avoid contact with such things as are likely to stimulate sense desire or excite the ego. This is necessary until strength is gained to withstand the forces of the world.
  5. A particular frequency, a wavelength, we may say, of the force of nature is what is called an object. There are no objects in this world, really speaking.
  6. Just as an object is a whirl of energy, the samskara is a whirl of mind. So you have to set right this whirl, make it straight and make it come back to the mental source, which is called sublimation.
  7. A difficult thing it is to become a philosopher! A philosopher is one who has an insight into the substantiality of things, and not the appearances they put on in their mutual relationship.
  8. Just as you have to treat other people as though they are equally valuable as yourself in the principle of ahimsa, you also have to treat yourself as very valuable. You are also a great treasure.
  9. The meditation of life, then, is the gradual establishment of wholeness in the midst of particulars, in every level, in every stage, in every degree of evolution.
  10. God is here, and not in the heavens above. God loves you more than you love Him, and you are bound to achieve this glorious consummation of life.
  11. There are not many actions taking place in the universe; only one action is taking place, regardless of who is appearing to do it.
  12. The jivanmukta, the one liberated while living, sees no difference between the different types of activities in the world because, from his standpoint, all movements are movements within the Absolute.
  13. There is no such thing as renunciation, if it is to be properly understood. It is a renunciation of a lesser degree of consciousness for the sake of a larger, more inclusive consciousness.
  14. It is not good to perceive a person. It is good to feel the presence of a person as one feels one's own self.
  15. Knowledge is happiness; knowledge is virtue; knowledge is power.
  16. Understand the Understander, which is more beneficial to you than to know what is being understood by the understanding as an external object.
  17. To think as a yogi would think would be to think as the world would think.
  18. The very consciousness of the limitation of consciousness proves that it is not limited; therefore, anything that is personal is far from the spiritual.
  19. Life is blessed. It is not a curse, as many may imagine under difficult circumstances. The kingdom of heaven is a blessed area, and we are in it.
  20. The salvation of the individual is when the individual merges itself into the Infinite Consciousness and exists as the Absolute.
  21. What we call yoga, the union par excellence, is the union of our being with the being of the object, whatever be that object.
  22. Science and religion are inseparable, if they are dispassionately looked at and studied.
  23. The test of spiritual advancement is a gradual attainment of freedom from doubts of all kinds and a conviction of having reached a settled understanding in regard to one's true aim of life.
  24. Philosophy is the search for the higher values of life, and not the values of the world as they are available to us.
  25. We live religion when we are in a state of meditation because religion is the relation between man and God, between the soul and the Absolute. The affirmation of it in life is religion's aim.
  26. What is Virat? It is you, yourself, expanded to the ultimate pinnacle of the absolute Universal.
  27. Truth, dependent on its own Self, transcends even the ideas of omniscience and omnipotence, for these involve relations which are a limitation on the Absolute.
  28. Goodness and badness of things are personal evaluations of situations which are themselves impersonal.
  29. Consciousness is never limited, for the very consciousness of the fact of limitation is proof of its transcendental unlimitedness.
  30. The Absolute transcends every function, becoming and process. It is beyond thought, emotion, will, feeling, sensation, ascertainment, name, form and action.
  31. The soul that is freed from the bonds of world-existence traverses through its physical, vital, mental, intellectual and causal vestments and rejoices in the ecstasy of the realisation of Brahman.