Gospel of Strength-Fiery words of Swami Vivekananda

Stop Becoming Weak! Strength, strength, it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery. Never be weak. You must be strong; you have infinite strength within you. Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin--to say that you are weak. The only saint is that soul that never weakens and faces everything. All weakness, all bondage is imagination... Do not weaken!... Stand up and be strong! That is all the religion I know. Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one work, weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil-doing; it is weakness that is the source of all selfishness; it is weakness that makes men injure others; it is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality. The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death. There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.This is the great fact: strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death. You must retain great strength in your mind and words. "I am low, I am low"--repeating these ideas in the mind, man belittles and degrades himself. Sin may be said to be the feeling of every kind of weakness. From this weakness spring jealousy, malice, and so forth. Hence weakness is sin.

What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves... Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your own feet and be men. What is sin and what is misery, and what are all these, but the results of weakness?... Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation. Let positive, strong, helpful thougts enter into their brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones. What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves... Make your nerves strong. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your own feet and be men. Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches us not to think ourselves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. I beg you to understand this one fact - no good comes out of the man who day and night thinks he is nobody. If a man day and night thinks he is miserable low and nothing, nothing he becomes... That is the great fact which you ought to remember. Being reminded of weakness does not help much; give strength, and strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time.The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Everybody is hypnotised already. The work of attaining freedom, of realising one's real nature, consists in de-hypnotisation. Arise, awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, procalim the God within you, do not deny Him! Too much of inactivity, too much of weakness, too much of hypnotism has been and is upon our race... De-hypnotise yourselves. The way to do that is found in your own sacred books. Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakens. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activitiy.

Studying the external alone, man begins to feel himself to be nothing. These vast powers of nature, these tremendous changes occurring - whole communities wiped off the face of the earth in a twinkling of time, one volcanic eruption shattering to pieces whole continents - perceiving and studying these things, man begins to feel himself weak. Therefore it is not the study of external nature that makes one strong. But there is the internal nature of man - a million times more powerful than any volcanic eruption or any law of nature - which conquers nature, triumphs over all its laws. And that alone teaches man what he is. This is not the time with us to weep even in joy; we have had weeping enough; no more is this the time for us to become soft. This softness has been with us till we have become like masses of cotton and are dead. What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and the secrets of the universe, and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean and meeting death face to face. "When I asked God for Strength, He gave me difficult situations to face. When I asked god for Brain and Brown, He gave me puzzles in life to solve. When I asked God for Happiness, He showed me some unhappy people. When I asked God for wealth , He showed me how to work hard. When I asked God for Favours, He showed me opportunities to work hard. When I asked God for Peace, He showed me how to help others. God gave me nothing I wanted, He gave me Everything I needed. " Swami Vivekananda

[When a disciple pleaded helplessness, Swamiji thundered:] What nonsense are you talking? Within you lies indomitable power. Only thinking, "I am nothing, I am nothing,' you have become powerless. You do not deserve to live if you cannot help yourselves. It is diabolism to say, "I am so miserable." Every man has his own burden to bear. If you are miserable, try to conquer it, try to be happy.