THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD BY T.S. ELIOT

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

HOLY BIBLE OLD TESTAMENT

ISAIAH 

64:8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand.
55:10 For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, 

GENESIS
1:16 Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.

 Psalm 139
GOD'S PERFECT KNOWLEDGE OF MAN
FOR THE CHIEF MUSICIAN. A PSALM OF DAVID.
1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
3 You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
5 You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall[a] on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;[b]
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.

 JOB 28
Job's Discourse on Wisdom
‘Surely there is a mine for silver,
and a place for gold to be refined.
2 Iron is taken out of the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
3 Man puts an end to darkness,
and searches every recess for ore in the darkness and the shadow of death.
4 He breaks open a shaft away from people; in places forgotten by feet they hang far away from men; they swing to and fro.
5 As for the earth, from it comes bread;
but underneath it is turned up as by fire.
6 Its stones are the source of sapphires,*
and it contains gold dust.
7 ‘That path no bird knows,
nor has the falcon’s eye seen it.
8 The proud lions have not trodden it;
nor has the fierce lion passed over it.
9 ‘He puts his hand on the flint;
he overturns the mountains at the roots.
10 He cuts out channels in the rocks,
and his eye sees every precious thing.
11 He dams up the streams from trickling;
what is hidden he brings forth to light.
12 ‘But where can wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
13 Man does not know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says, “It is not in me”,
and the sea says, “It is not with me.”
15 It cannot be purchased for gold,
nor can silver be weighed for its price.
16 It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir,
in precious onyx or sapphire.
17Neither gold nor crystal can equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold.
18 No mention shall be made of coral or quartz,
for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
19 The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it,
nor can it be valued in pure gold.
20 From Where then does wisdom come ?
And where is the place of understanding?
21 It is hidden from the eyes of all living,
and concealed from the birds of the air.

 

 

Rare Sayings of Swami Vivekananda

Rise at the expense of another! I didn't come to earth for that!

Whom to fear? Can I hurt myself? Can I kill myself?Do you fear yourself? Then will all sorrow disappear. What can cause me sorrow? I am the One Existence of the universe. Then all jealousies will disappear; of whom to be jealous? of myself?
It is good to love God for hope of reward in this or the next world, but it is better to love God for love's sake, and the prayer goes: "Lord, I do not want wealth, nor children, nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth, but grant me this that I may love Thee without the hope of reward-love unselfishly for love's sake.
Children, you are slaves of the senses; there is only finiteness in the senses, there is only ruination in the senses; the three short days of luxury here bring only ruin at last. Give it all up, renounce the love of the senses and of the world; that is the way of religion.
O India, this is your terrible danger. The spell of imitating the West is getting such a strong hold upon you that what is good or what is bad is no longer decided by reason, judgment, discrimination, or reference to the Shastras.
On one side, New India is saying, "What the Western nations do is surely good, otherwise how did they become so great?" On the other side, Old India is saying, "The flash of lightning is intensely bright, but only for a moment; look out, boys, it is dazzling your eyes. Beware!
Say, brother,"The soil of India is my highest heaven, the good of India is my good," and repeat and pray day and night,"O thou Lord of Gauri, O Thou Mother of the Universe, vouchsafe manliness unto me! O Thou Mother of Strength, take away my weakness, take away my unmanliness, and make me a Man!"
I am so sorry that I cannot make myself sweet and accommodating to every black falsehood. But I cannot. I have suffered for it all my life, but I cannot. I have essayed and essayed, but I cannot. At last I have given it up. The Lord is great. He will not allow me to become a hypocrite. Now let what is in come out. I have not found a way that will please all, and I cannot be what I am, true to my own self. "Youth and beauty vanish, life and wealth vanish, name and fame vanish, even the mountains crumble into dust. Friendship and love vanish. Truth alone abides.
For a luxury of a handful of the rich, let millions of men and women remain submerged in the hell of want and abysmal depth of ignorance; for if they get wealth and education, society will be upset!
Who constitute society? The millions-or you, I, and a few others of the upper classes?
The world is, but not beautiful nor ugly, but as sensations without exciting any emotion. Oh, Joe, the blessedness of it! Everything is good and beautiful; for things are all losing their relative proportions to me-my body among the first. Om That Existence!

Sister Nivedita on Swami Vivekananda

The truths he preaches would have been as true, had he never been born. Nay more, they would have been equally authentic. The difference would have lain in their difficulty of access, in their want of modern clearness and incisiveness of statement, and in their loss of mutual coherence and unity. Had he not lived, texts that today will carry the bread of life to thousands, might have remained the obscure disputes of scholars. He taught with authority and not as one of the Pandits. For he himself had plunged to the depths of the realization which he preached, and he came back, like Ramanuja, only to tell its secrets to the pariah, the outcast, and the foreigner.
Never had one felt so strongly as now, before him, that one stood on the threshold of an infinite light. Yet none was prepared, least of all on that last happy Friday, July the 4th, on which he appeared so much stronger and better than he had been for years, to see the end so soon.
May God grant that this living presence of our Master, of which death itself had not had power to rob us, become never, to us his disciples, as a thing to be remembered, but remain with us always in its actuality, even unto the end!