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Swami Bhaskarananda Teachings And Quotes - Ramakrishna Mission

A collection of teachings and quotes of Swami Bhaskarananda - associated with Ramakrishna Mission.

According to Vedanta, love of God is identical with love of the Ultimate Truth. In the scriptures of Vedanta, God has been mentioned as Satyasya Satyam—the Truth of all truths.

Bhagavad Gita, the famous scripture of Hinduism, tells us how the emotion expressed as love of sense objects, if obstructed, can successively become transformed into anger, delusion and confused thinking, thus causing great harm to the individual’s mind.

According to Sri Ramakrishna, the emotion or thought of lustfulness cannot be suppressed, repressed, or annihilated with the thought of hatred toward the opposite sex. We have to learn the art of transforming lustfulness into love of God.


According to the ancient teachings of Vedanta, Divinity is equally present everywhere, but it is not equally manifest in all places. Manifesting our inherent Divinity in the fullest measure is called experiencing God. The only way to transcend suffering in this world is to experience this Divinity. And Divinity can be experienced only by the pure mind. Purification of the mind is called in Sanskrit ‘Chitta-shuddhi’. Without Chitta-shuddhi or the ‘purification of mind’, no God-vision is possible.

A spiritually illumined soul lives in the world, yet is never contaminated by it.

Our greatest gift to ourselves is the discovery of divinity within ourselves.

The Self forms the very core of man's being. It is different from his physical body, vital energy, senses and mind.

Any religion can be compared to the attic of an old home. Unless the attic is regularly cleaned, it gathers dust and cobwebs and eventually becomes unusable. Similarly, if a religion cannot be updated or cleaned from time to time, it loses its usefulness and cannot relate anymore to changed times and people.

Man's ego is not this Self. The ego or I-ness is an idea only; it is purely created by the mind and it cannot be the Self.

Behind the psychophysical man is the Self, which is divine.

Swami Bhaskarananda Thoughts on Mind

The mind, like water, has natural tendency to flow downward. It has an inherent inclination to do what is harmful by indulging in sensual, destructive and negative thoughts. We must constantly watch our minds and not allow them to go downward.

The mind naturally resents being controlled or restrained.

The mind inherently gets bored doing the same thing over and over again. It constantly craves newer and more sensational experiences.

Old bad habits of the mind die hard. It takes a lot of will power and sustained effort to get rid of them.

Source – Meditation Mind and Patanjali’s Yoga by Swami Bhaskarananda

Swami Bhaskarananda Thoughts on Peace

The wise say that ever-enduring peace can never be obtained through external means.

One who has found inner peace has indeed found peace that abides forever.

Through spiritual discipline alone this inner peace can be acquired.

One who has found peace within transmits peace to others by one’s own life’s example, though one be not aware of it.

Therefore, say the wise, may all try to create peace within, before trying to create any temporary or superficial peace in the world through external means.