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A TASTER – SOME LECTURES BY SWAMIJI –
Swamiji is unique – no Eastern monk has also earned a BA with a curriculum made by Scottish Calvinist
missionaries. He stated he wished he could throw his
degree in the Ganges! But he was indelibly marked –
and it gave him his brilliant English and Western logic.
For Europe to start true ‚free-thinking‘, a few thinkers
had to take on some 2000 year-old Indian ideas – that
are in this book.
People have been meditating for 3000 years – nothing new!
Frequent sitting in concentration removes sloppy thinking. It reduces the mind’s dependence on food from the senses.
Some chapters –
Chapter 0 – What is ‚Free-thinking‘?
Ch. 1 – To turn man-the-animal into Man-the-God
‚India’s shining message.‘ 1901 ca.
Ch. 3 – Infinite Dreamers Dreaming Finite Dreams.
‚The carpenters try to teach the Architect.‘
18 April 1900. Tucker Hall, Alameda, SF.
Some paragraphs in the chapter:
1- Is this world the goal of life? 2- Is enjoyment the goal of life? 3- Kindergarten religion. 4- The carpenters try to teach the Architect. 5- Can this life ever be the goal of the Soul? 6- What is your life? It is that same struggle for Freedom. 11- Every machine that saves labour puts more stress on labour.
Ch. 6 – I am ‚That‘. Nature and Man.
20 March 1900. Washington Hall, SF.
Some paragraphs:
1- Thoughts do not just happen. 2- There is no such thing as free will. 3- The will is bound by the effects of previous acts.
Ch. 10 – The highest expression of human thought.
Monism. ‚The Atman.‘ (The Soul).
2 February 1896. Brooklyn. NY.
Some paragraphs:
1- The fairest flower of any religion man has produced. 2- I am asked for a comfortable religion! 3- The vast mass of superstition innate in every human. 4- In ‚That Infinite Existence‘, we dream these various dreams. 5- How can you know the Knower? 6- You will expand or limit your perspective
with exactly those things that are important for you. 7- The dream of life goes rolling on. 8- He places on that throne the Self of man. 9- I worship my Self. 10- This little ‚I‘ never existed. 11- Truth never dreams; illusion arises from illusion. 12- The scriptures are but kindergarten maps. 13- And this is the one way to Knowledge. 14- For him there is Eternal Peace, for none else, for none else. 15- Therein lies the expla-nation of all morality. 16- Through the senses as matter. Through the intellect as Souls. Through the Spirit as God.
Ch. 11 – How we came to dream such trash!
29 July 1895. 1000 Islands, NY State.
Ch.12 – Do not repent! Be a nun or be a monk.
3 August 1895. 1000 Islands, NY State.
Some paragraphs:
1- With desire comes terrible bondage. 2- Learn to feel yourself in other bodies. 3- Do not repent! 4- We must strive and practise. 5- Intellect ends where spirituality begins.
Ch. 13 – Buddha, Gautama. 1000 Islands, NY. 1895.
Ch. 14 – Know Yourself. The First Steps.
11 Dec 1895. Beginners‘ class.
228 W 39St. New York.
Some paragraphs:
1- That peculiar reaction called misery/depression. 2- There is no such thing as fate. 3- How to undo the effects of years/lives of mistakes. 4- Know Yourself – Become conscious of the ‚Infinite Nature‘ within. 5- Dare to be a rationalist. 6- Bound to old superstitions. 7- If reason tells you that nothing the senses convey to the mind is true … … 8- Show that you have something. 9- Detachment is the first step. 10- We are slaves to everything.
Ch. 15 – Descriptions of the early New York classes by regular class-goers: ‚I passed onto a road leading to Limitless Attainment‘.
Ch:16 – My Master. First Build your Character.
23 Feb 1896. Madison Square Garden, NY.
Ch. 19 – Questions & Answers (selected) at
Harvard lecture, ‚Vedanta Philosophy.‘
‚You have not solved the problem of want, only made it keener‘.
Ch. 20 – ‚I have bundled my things and wait
for the Great Deliverer‘.
18 April 1900.
Letter to Josephine MacLeod while in SF.
Ch. 21 – Swamiji’s views, his comments and a joke he liked to tell.
Ch. 22 – Time, Space and Projections.
The well-acquired habit of the mind depending on food from the senses.
Swami Ramakrishnananda (1863-1911). Fellow monk of Swamiji’s. Written 1910.
Ch. 23 – ‚And when I die‘. Chant from the Rig-Veda. 1500BC ca. The earliest Veda ‚book‘. The earliest Sanskrit.
Ch. 24 – The Silent Syllable. The Word.
Atharvasika Upanishad
A very short Forest Book (Upanishad).
Ch. 28 – ‚It’s not your money, it’s God’s‘ –
Swamiji meets John D. Rockefeller.
‚Your art demands it‘. ‚He emptied my brain of all its feverish complexities‘. Swamiji meets Emma Calvé.
Ch. 29 – Swamiji’s two teachers:
William Hastie, Calvinist missionary.
Ramakrishna, Hindu aesthetic.
‚Life is to learn how to cross the ocean of delusion.‘
Ch. 30 – Poems by Swamiji. Original in English.
Ch. 31 – Vision vs Reasoning.
Eastern mind discipline vs Western reasoning.