Swami Vivekananda

Excessive attention to the minutiae of astrology is one of the superstitions which has hurt the Hindus very much.

The whole universe is composed of name and form. Whatever we see is either a compound of name and form, or simply name with form which is a mental image.

This is the work of Nâma-Rupa - name and form. Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space, and causation is within Maya.

Freedom can never be true of name and form; it is the clay out of which we (the pots) are made; then it is limited and not free, so that freedom can never be true of the related. One pot can never say "I am free" as a pot; only as it loses all ideas of form does it become free.

Space-time-causation, or name-and-form, is what is called Maya.

The forms are evanescent; but the spirit, being in the Lord and of the Lord, is immortal and omnipresent.

Form and formless are intertwined in this world. The formless can only be expressed in form and form can only be thought with the formless.

Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha.

A form comes out of a combination of force and matter.

All forms are transitory, that is why all religions say, "God has no form".

Anything that is in space has form. Space itself has form. Either you are in space, or space is in you. The soul is beyond all space. Space is in the soul, not the soul in space.

A wave in the ocean is a wave, only in so far as it is bound by name and form.

We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man, and man is God.

There is no end to the power a man can obtain.

Well has it been said that man is the only animal that naturally looks upwards; every other animal naturally looks down.

The ignorant man never enjoys.

The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.

The happiest is the man who is not at all selfish.

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.

Man, therefore, according to the Vedanta philosophy, is the greatest being that is in the universe.

Man the infinite dreamer, dreaming finite dreams!