Simple living and high thinking Try to make great and good men of yourselves. Do not expend your energies, do not waste thought on building beautiful and grand houses. Many of your houses are large and grand, but the men in them are very small. There are large tombs in India, but what do they contain? Nothing but rotten carcases, crawling worms and snakes.
Do not try to make your wife, your friends and yourself grand, by wasting energy on big houses and grand furniture. If you take this idea, if you realize that, if you perceive and know that the one aim and goal of life is not in wasting energy and accumulating riches, but in cultivating the inner powers, in educating yourself, to free yourself, to become God, if you realize that and expend your energies in that direction the family ties will be no obstacle to you.
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The wages of sin is death. Do any kind of wrong, do any mischief, harbour in your mind any kind wrong, do these wrong deeds, commit these sins even at a place where you are sure nobody will catch you or find you out …. You must be visited with pain and suffering.
The wages of sin is death.
In the most solitary caves commit a sin and you will in no time be astonished to see that the very grass under your feet stands up and bears testimony against you. You will in time see that the very walls, the very trees have tongues to speak. “The moral law is that you must be pure. Harbour impurity and you must suffer the consequences”.
The kingdom of Heaven is within you.
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Elevate the mind by hitting it upward On the playground, in India, we place an instrument called gulli, which is thick at the middle and sharply pointed at the ends, with both ends raised above the ground, and we strike one end with a bat and the gulli rises at once in the air a little; then we deal it a very hard blow with the bat and it goes flying right into the air to a great distance. There are two processes in this game. The first is to raise the gulli and the second is to make it fly into the air. If the mind is to be brought into the divine communion, first of all it is to be raised just a little, and the second process is to shoot it far off into the spiritual atmosphere.
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The records of Truth Christ spoke orally only to eleven disciples, but those words were stored up by the atmosphere, were gathered up by the skies and are to-day being read by millions of people. Truth crushed o earth shall rise again.
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Carping injures self Remember it always that when sending out thoughts of jealousy and envy, of criticism, of fault-finding, or thoughts of smacking of jealousy and hatred, you are courting the very same thoughts yourself. Whenever you are discovering the mote in your brother’s eye, you are putting the beam into your own.
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It is strange, very strange, that people want to rob each other, as for worldly wealth, but as for higher wealth (spiritual religious riches), when they are presented with it, they want to kill their donors.
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The reading of books and learning all knowledge is one thing; to acquire the Truth is another. You may read all the sacred Scriptures and yet not know the Truth.
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Death asks, not “What have you?” but “Who are you ?” Life’s question is not “What have I?” but “What am I ?”
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To give is a better bargain than to get.
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The rope-dancer at first rides the rope, single, alone. When highly practiced he takes with him a boy or some heavy object and dances on the rope. So, after living a single life and acquiring perfection, a man may allow others in his company.
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SOURCE: THE STORY OF SWAMI RAMA – THE POET MONK OF THE PUNJAB
BY PURAN SINGH – GANESH & Co., Madras. 1924
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