The same power is in every man, the one manifesting more, the other less; the same potentiality is in everyone.

These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides.

Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really surrender to the will of God? Only the person whose mind has been purified by selfless work.

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind?....... We make our own destiny.

You see, no one can teach anybody. The teacher spoils everything by thinking that he is teaching. Thus Vedanta says that within man is all knowledge-even in a boy it is so-and it requires only an awakening, and that much is the work of a teacher.

That the Hindus, absorbed in the ideal, lacked in realistic observation is evident from this. Take painting and sculpture. What do you see in the Hindu paintings? All sorts of grotesque and unnatural figures. What do you see in a Hindu temple? A Chaturbhanga Narayana or some such thing. But take into consideration any Italian picture or Grecian statue-what a study of nature you find in them! A gentleman for twenty years sat burning a candle in his hand, in order to paint a lady carrying a candle in her hand.

If a man, day and night, thinks he is miserable, low and nothing, nothing he becomes. If you say yea, yea, "I am, I am", so shall you be.