All manifest life seems to require a period of sleep, of calm, in which to gain added strength, renewed vigour, for the next manifestation, or awakening to activity. Thus is the march of all progress, of all manifest life - in waves, successive waves, [of] activity and repose. Waves succeed each other in an endless chain of progression.

To believe that mind is all, that thought is all is only a higher materialism.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

Life is called Samsara - it is the result of the conflicting forces acting upon us. Materialism says, "The voice of freedom is a delusion." Idealism says, "The voice that tells of bondage is but a dream." Vedanta says, "We are free and not free at the same time." That means that we are never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual side. The Self is beyond both freedom and bondage. We are Brahman, we are immortal knowledge beyond the senses, we are Bliss Absolute.

Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power.

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells - that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one's spiritual Self (atman).

A monk is not forbidden to marry, but if he takes a wife she becomes a monk with the same powers and privileges and occupies the same social position as her husband.