Swamiji tells a glorious story, the moral of which is: Whatever happens is for the good.
Swamiji continues a discussion on 'Destiny' from audio clip 123-5.
Destiny – to hell with it! I shall swallow destiny because I am the child of Ramakrishna, who worshipped [Mother] Kali and identified himself with Kali. And what is Kali? Maha Kali. The time that swallows time itself. That's the meaning. That's my Master.
Who cares? Other things are just stages in evolution, stages in this world. Let it carry on. Witness it. A witness can never identify itself. So someone scolded you, what are you going to do? Someone doing you wrong, are you going to retaliate? Just keep witnessing. Carry on. Let there be two – it has to be in this world. And when that two becomes one, who's witnessing who? Consciousness is playing with Consciousness.
There's no [physical] material. There's no matter. So it doesn't matter. Yes, you'll say it's easy to talk great philosophy, but this is the reality. Please believe me. And if you don't believe me, believe the great ones. Try it, see it, and you will reach it.
Al things are God's grace. Everything happens for the good. But don't use that as an excuse. Always try to do the good.
Swamiji then tells a superb and very amusing story of a great King and his minister. [Admin: this sadhaka was in that satsang – a merry moment indeed.] The King, for some unknown reason, was sharpening his own sword and cut a finger in the process. [Being male😉?] He made a great fuss. Swamiji enjoys telling the story so much, he's chuckling! You have to hear it with your own ears. 😂 The congregation laughs delightedly.
The conclusion of the story reinforces again, that whatever happens, happens for the good. And Swamiji uses the point to say that whatever happens we must not stop 'doing good'. That it's a privilege to do good [as instruments of the divine] It's not our right, but our privilege, because in two seconds, we can turn and do the wrong thing. Many yogis thought they could look down, and learned otherwise.
Drawing the narrative threads together, Swamiji quotes Sri Ramakrishna, saying, 'The breeze of God's grace is blowing, all you need to do is unfurl your sail.' O Lord, today I unfurled the sail, and it didn't work. Congregation chuckles. Then, says Swamiji, self-effort comes into it. It's also God's grace. You see how you recognise God's grace? That's what God's grace is.
Swamiji expands on the many ways in which God's grace manifests, but it seems we often simply don't recognise it.
To be blessed with these wonderful insights, please click on the link below. Jai Sri Ramakrishna!
Duration: 10:56
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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 today's post was crafted from prompts to Microsoft Copilot AI – Artificial Intelligence.