Green Message
Green Message: The Evergreen Messages of Spirituality, Sanskrit and Nature
Home > Sayings / Quotes of Swami Vivekananda > Freedom
Freedom from what?
• The mind cannot be easily conquered. Minds that rise into waves at the approach of every little thing, at the slightest provocation or danger, in what a state they must be! What to talk of greatness or spirituality, when these changes come over the mind? This unstable condition of the mind must be changed. We must ask ourselves how far we can be acted upon by the external world, and how far we can stand on our own feet in spite of all the forces outside us. When we have succeeded in preventing all the forces in the world from throwing us off our balance, then alone we have attained to freedom, and not before. That is salvation.
• The idea of freedom is the only true idea of salvation--freedom from everything, the senses, whether of pleasure or pain, from good as well as evil. More than this even. We must be free from death; and to be free from death, we must be free from life. Life is but a dream of death. Where there is life, there will be death; so get away from life if you would be rid of death.
• Everything in time, space, and causation is bound. The soul is beyond all time, all space, all causation. That which is bound is nature, not the soul.
• All nature is bound by law, the law of its own action; and this law can never be broken. If you could break a law of nature, all nature would come to an end in an instant. There would be no more nature. He who attains freedom breaks the law of nature, and for him nature fades away and has no more power over him. Each one will break the law but once and forever, and that will end his trouble with nature.
• Liberation means entire freedom---freedom from the bondage of good, as well as from the bondage of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one.
Time taken for Yoga < Prev Next > Why Freedom?