In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotations on senses or indriya(Hindi: इन्द्रिय, Bengali: ইন্দ্রিয়).
- All pleasures of the senses or even of the mind are evanescent but within ourselves is the one true unrelated pleasure, dependent upon nothing.[Source]
- An uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense-enjoyments become less and less.[Source]
- Back from the senses, back! Do not go to the senses is the watchword of Vairagya.[Source]
- Control the organs of the senses and control the mind.[Source]
- Emotions have more connection with the senses than with the faculty of reason.[Source]
- Giving up the senses makes a nation survive.[Source]
- Going after things of the senses has made us human beings.[Source]
- Great is the tenacity with which man clings to the senses.[Source]
- Happiness and misery are only in the senses, they cannot touch our real Self.[Source]
- Heaven are only other states of existence with added senses and heightened powers.[Source]
- How naturally we love objects of the senses![Source]
- If I am God, I am beyond the tendencies of the senses and will not do evil.[Source]
- Mind is the internal sense, the outer senses are its instruments.[Source]
- “Mother! In the sea of life my bark is sinking. The whirlwind of illusion, the storm of attachment is growing every moment.
My five oarsmen (senses) are foolish, and the helmsman (mind) is weak.
My bearings are lost, my boat is sinking. O Mother! Save me!”[Source] - No one denies that our senses, as long as they are normal, are the most trustworthy guides we have, and the facts they gather in for us form the very foundation of the structure of human knowledge. But if they mean that all human knowledge is only sense-perception and nothing but that, we deny it.[Source]
- Our senses are limited, very limited indeed; and within these limitations exists what we call our universe.[Source]
- Sense-happiness is not the goal of humanity. Wisdom (Jnâna) is the goal of all life.[Source]
- The animal has its happiness in the senses, the man in his intellect, and the god in spiritual contemplation.[Source]
- The earth is moving, yet we think that the sun is moving instead of the earth, which we know to be a mistake, a delusion of the senses.[Source]
- The lower the animal, the more is its enjoyment in the senses, the more it lives in the senses. Civilisation, true civilization, should mean the power of taking the animal-man out of his sense-life — by giving him visions and tastes of planes much higher — and not external comforts.[Source]
- The senses are simply the external instruments.[Source]
- The senses cheat you day and night.[Source]
- The senses drag the human soul out.[Source]
- The senses must go. We cannot be bound to the senses.[Source]
- This life in the five senses, life in the material world, is not all; it is only a small portion, and merely superficial.[Source]
- This universe of ours, the universe of the senses, the rational, the intellectual, is bounded on both sides by the illimitable, the unknowable, the ever unknown.[Source]
- The Vedanta philosophy teaches that man is not bound by his five senses.[Source]
- The Yogi wants to go beyond the senses, therefore intellect is of no use to him.[Source]
- This very world is seen by the five senses as matter, by the very wicked as hell, by the good as heaven, and by the perfect as God.[Source]
- To restrain the Indriyas (organs) from going towards the objects of the senses, to control them and bring them under the guidance of the will, is the very central virtue in religious culture.[Source]
- We are all slaves to our senses.[Source]
- We are bound by the senses; they play upon us, make fools of us all the time.[Source]
- What is in the senses? The senses are all delusion.[Source]
- When we approach Him with the five senses, we can see Him only as the Personal God.[Source]
- Yoga is controlling the senses, will and mind.[Source]
Swami Vivekananda’s quotes on the sixth sense
- All Hindu philosophy declares that there is a sixth sense, the superconscious, and through it comes inspiration.[Source]
- The distinguished Oriental thought there was a sixth sense far greater than any of the five we know we possess. It was the truth of revelation. A man may read all the books on religion in the world and yet be the greatest blackguard in the country. Revelation means later reports of spiritual discoveries.[Source]
