Vedanta and Yoga - Part 2

This world is a great school. This world is for your education. You learn several valuable
lessons daily. If you are wise enough to utilise all opportunities to the best possible advantage in the spirit of Yoga, your capacities and will-power will develop to an astonishing degree. You will
grow. You will evolve. You will expand. There will be integral development. You will march
forward towards the goal. All veils will drop down one by one. All limitations or barriers will be
annihilated. All shackles or fetters will be torn asunder. You will receive more and more Divine
Light Knowledge, Purity, Peace and Spiritual Strength.
You are the author of your own fate. You yourself have created this. You yourself are
entirely responsible for this. You are the architect of your joys and sorrows. Just as the spider or the silkworm creates a web or cocoon for its own destruction, so also you have created this cage of flesh by your own actions, attractions, repulsions and false egoism. You have become the slave of the flesh, slave of your body and mind, slave of countless desires. You are sunk in the quagmire of deepest ignorance.
Weep not, my child! Sorrow not! A glorious brilliant future is awaiting you! Strive to come
out of this false cage of illusion right now, this very second. If your attempt is true and sincere, if
you endeavour with all your might and main to achieve this end, then by the ready Grace of the Lord thou shalt drive away these dark clouds of ignorance and shine in your true divine colours, in your native, pristine glory. Cast aside the erroneous idea: “I am the body.” Develop the consciousness and realisation of the real “I” within you. This real “I” is Sat-Chit-Ananda or Atman or the Self, the one common
Consciousness, the spiritual thread that links all hearts.
Awaken yourself to the conscious realisation of your actual oneness with the Supreme Self.
Think of the Self continuously. As Tennyson says: “Let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night
and day.” This is the real spiritual practice (Brahma-abhyasa). This will eventually lead to
Self-realisation. Let the struggle be keen. Let your endeavour be sincere. Let your motive be pure.
There must be iron discipline, iron determination, iron will and iron Sadhana (spiritual practice).
Then there will be no difficulty in the attainment of the final beatitude of life—a life sublime in its
nature, resplendent with spiritual light, radiant with splendour, vibrant with ecstasy and replete with
Peace. Mere intellectual conception of this identity or oneness will not serve your purpose. You
must actually feel and experience the truth of the same through intuition. You must become fully
aware of the Real Self, the basis or substratum or bed-rock of this world, body, mind, Prana and the senses. You must enter into a consciousness in which the realisation becomes part and parcel of your daily life. You must live this ideal spiritual life daily. Let your neighbours actually feel how entirely a changed being you are—a superman. Let them smell the Divine Fragrance from you. A full-blown Yogi can never be concealed. Just as fragrant fumes emanate from scented sticks so also sweet spiritual fragrance will emanate from your body, the moment you attain perfection in Yoga,even though you may shut yourself up in a cave of the far-off Himalayas.

From - SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA