Yama Quotes

“Call themselves?" asked Yama. "You are wrong, Sam, Godhood is more than a name. It is a condition of being. One does not achieve it merely by being immortal, for even the lowliest laborer in the fields may achieve continuity of existence. Is it then the conditioning of an Aspect? No. Any competent hypnotist can play games with the self-image. Is it the raising up of an Attribute? Of course not. I can design machines more powerful and more accurate than any faculty a man may cultivate. Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them."
"So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?"
"You choose the wrong adjective."
"You've already used up all the others.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Let us see rather that like Janus—or better, like Yama, the Brahmin god of death—religion has two faces, one very friendly, one very gloomy...”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“First, a man may in some ways be superior to his fellows and still serve them, if together they serve a common cause which is greater than any one man. I believe that I serve such a cause, or I would not be doing it.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“The optimism of a revolutionary always gives rise to a sense of wonder.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“Nachiketa went to Yama (God of death) to know the mystery of death (Katho Upanishad), that means to know what was after death. They did not want to see this life. They did not know how wonderful this life was. Whatever you can do, do it within this present life.
They didn’t want to know what was light, on the contrary searched for what was in the dark.”
― Sri Jibankrishna or Diamond

“The things that worry the pedestrian worry us not at all; but to control a new element your Yama must be that biological principle of adaptation to the new conditions, adjustment of the faculties to those conditions, and
consequent success in those conditions”
― Aleister Crowley

“In life, we did not know each other
But in Death, we are finally One.
For death does not discriminate
In his eyes, we are all equals.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Heart of Shiva : A Story of Rebirth, Enlightenment and Creation