Swamiji speaks about belief, tenacity and unwavering faith.
He even went to the extent of sending Bhakta Prahlada to a special school, to have him indoctrinated away from his idea that Lord Vishnu was God. But the process didn't work. Even though Hiranyakashipu berated the teacher concerned, for not successfully 'converting' the boy.
Swamiji tells a glorious story of how Prahlada visited a village potter and his faith in Lord Vishnu was validated and fully affirmed through the encounter.
His father tried every awful punishment and torture method imaginable, to get him to abandon his faith. But nothing, however radical, worked, and no harm came to Prahlada.
Says Swamiji: God never breaks his promise, for he says 'I am the protector of my devotees. Who relies on me, I protect him.'
But there is one criterion. You have to love him intensely. You have to want him intensely, and then only he will do that. 'Surrender' means the ego which is mature. Lord, before you switch off the light [in this body] before the current goes off, I want to serve you, and you alone.
And when that surrender happens in your life, faith will come, and like Prahlada, your faith will be reinforced by the potter. The potter is the maker of this body. This is the pot. And who baked this? Your father, or these earthly people?
Who digests the food when you're asleep at night? Who gave the tiniest heart to the ant? Such a small thing. How does it digest its food when it eats? Who made this complicated machine? It must be a power. The power that protected the cat and its kittens. [Lord] Rama.
Swamiji relates a last ditch attempt by a furious Hiranyakashipu, to turn Prahlada from his faith in Lord Vishnu. [The Bollywood soapie screenwriters of today, would envy such a spectacular plot line.😉]
And in the end, Narasimha, the power of Lord Vishnu, comes into the picture and fulfils all of the boon conditions enjoyed by Hiranyakashipu. A fascinating interrogation takes place. And then Hiranyakashipu's soul is whisked off to heaven.
Never think that people who are 'killed' by God himself have gone to hell, says Swamiji. As an example, he says if someone asks if Judas Iscariot [who betrayed the Lord Jesus for 30 pieces of silver] is in hell, he'll unhesitatingly say, 'No! He's in heaven, sitting with Jesus the Christ.' I prostrate to Judas again and again that he was given the opportunity to play a part [in the divine lila] to even betray the Lord. We haven't even got the guts to betray a fellow man here – nicely, perfectly. Neither do we have the guts to do something good, too. We are stuck in the middle.
Swamiji wraps up the lesson by saying, so the greatness of God, the power of God, penetrates everything. And ignorance of that fact makes you suffer pain, but knowledge of that fact could make you blissful from the beginning. After all, the saint and the sinner both have to reach it one day. One of them goes through a corrugated [rough, bumpy] road, and the other through a lovely tarred highway. And I like that highway. Swamiji says, may God bless you, may you have that ripe ego. Destiny? To hell with it!
To be inspired by these wonderful lessons, please click on the link below. Jai Sri Ramakrishna!
Duration: 13:00
Click here for the Flipbook version of: → Swamiji's biography
It's a free-to-read, draft 396 page, extended version of 'A Life Lived For Others. No need to install a PDF reader. It'll work in your present browser.
However, if you'd prefer a straight-up PDF version, please click HERE.
Dear Devotee, if we use the term 'He or he', when referring to Swamiji, it's not impolite or disrespectful. It's to minimise the repetitiveness of saying or writing 'Swamiji' too many times.
The original audio recordings of these posts were made by close Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa and Swami Shivapadananda devotee, Mother Radha. The audio editing and noise reduction of the original 1970s-onwards tapes, has been lovingly engineered, over many years, by her son and our dear gurubhai, Brother Tim. May Sri Ramakrishna and Swamiji bless them both.
Admin tip: Underlined words are links. If you click on them, they'll take you to an explanation of the particular word or term. [In these overviews, Admin comments are typically in a smaller green font, and square bracketed, like this statement.]
Dear reader, if you spot typos or other errors, please feel free to email the site admin on info@imbizo.com with your suggested correction/s.
Context: As always, care should be taken to remember that what Swamiji was saying, was often very specific to the needs of people with him at the time. Please bear this in mind.
Links to our Guru Parampara (spiritual lineage) organisations, which will broaden your knowledge base: Ramakrishna Math and Mission and our alma maters, the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa and the Sri Sarada Devi Ashram in Durban. The Ramakrishna Centre of Johannesburg is also active in Gauteng province in South Africa.
There are various publications [The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna etc.] which you can download at no charge, from the Ramakrishna Centre of SA website page, HERE.
The image in this post is crafted from prompts to Microsoft Copilot AI – Artificial Intelligence.