Prayer Book

8. Strength is Life

This is a great fact: strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death. The older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel.

It is easy to be active. Let the reins go, and the horses will run away with you. Anyone can do that, but he who can stop the plunging horses is the strong man. Which requires the greater strength, letting go or restraining? The calm man is not the man who is dull.

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of the strength that is already within them.

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.

Therefore, my friend, as one of your blood, as on that lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength and every time strength. And the Upanishads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energized through them.

What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man - making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want.

We speak of many things parrot - like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything; we must strengthen it. First of all, our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. be strong, my young friends; that is my advice to you.

All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore make your own future. 'Let the dead past bury its dead.' The infinite future is before you, and you must always remember that each world, thought, and deed, lays up a store for you and that, as the bad thoughts and bad works are ready to spring upon you like tigers, so also there is the inspiring hope that the good thoughts and good deeds are ready with the power of a hundred thousand angels to defend you always and for ever.

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny.

Well has it been said that the masses admire the lion that kills a thousand lambs, never for a moment thinking that it is death to the lambs, although a momentary triumph for the lion; because they find pleasure only in manifestations of physical strength. Thus it is with the ordinary run of mankind. They understand and find pleasure in everything that is external.

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.

Men, men, these are wanted: everything else will be ready, but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized.

Your country requires heroes; be heroes! Your duty is to go on working, and then everything will follow of itself.

It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. it is man-making education all round that we want. And here is the test of truth - anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true.

My plan is to follow the ideas of the great ancient masters. I have studied their work, and it has been given unto me to discover the line of action they took. They were the great originators of society. They were the great givers of strength, and of purity, and of life. They did most marvellous work. We have to do most marvellous work also.

What makes you weep, my friend? In you is all power/ Summon up your all-powerful nature, O mighty-one, and this whole universe will lie at your feet. It is the self alone that predominates and not matter.

The difference is here, that the Englishman believe in himself and you do not. He believes in his being an Englishman, and he can do anything. That brings out the God within him, and he can do anything he likes. You have been told and taught that you can do nothing, and nonentities you becoming every day. What we want is strength, so believe in yourselves.

Stand and die in your own strength; if there is any sin in the world, it is weakness; avoid all weakness; for weakness is sin, weakness is death.