Daily Reading 4 – What is Spirituality?

From Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Devotee: What is spirituality?
Swamiji: It is control of the senses. Control of the senses, reading the scriptures, and practising what you read – this leads to mind control.

Read the Sermon on the Mount and Christ’s promises. Then you will find God in your heart. ‘I am the vine and you are the branches.’ ‘I and my Father are one.’ This is the highest teaching.

‘Each soul is potentially divine,’ said Swami Vivekananda. Our wrong concept makes God
appear so [as it seems to us] because we are looking through the eyes of the senses. Thus we do not look at God. If God is within you, God is there too, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. First see God within you, and then see God within others.

At first God projected this world. Where do you project dreams? Within yourself. So everything is within God. In the beginning was God and nothing else. Then out of His power He projected all this. It is not scientific to say we got something out of nothing. First know the divinity within, then [know/see it] everywhere. God is Consciousness; Consciousness Itself.

[Devotee asks a question clearly along the lines of, ‘How did Lucifer the angel become the Devil?’]

Swamiji: Because he was wrong he is known as the devil. He misused his power, just as we misuse our power. To know the mind is to study yourself, analyse yourself. It is not for someone else to do this. If you think it is hard, it will be hard. I do not think it is difficult, I do not think it is easy. Go like an animal, that is to say, where instinct leads you.

Do all moderately, do not overeat or under-eat.

Think where thoughts come from. See where thought comes from. It bubbles up from the ground like spring water. Look at it and it disappears. Just be calm.

The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.

Underlined words are linked to clarification, explanation or other sources. Just tap on them.

For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial ‘memoir’ booklet of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.

There’s also a Facebook site for Swamiji’s posts now. They’re for newer readings published much more recently. Click HERE to view.

These recordings or the excerpts from them, were made from the early 1970s onward, by Mother Radha, a close devotee of Swamiji’s and edited for uploading here by our gurubhai and her son, Brother Tim. Please be mindful that what Swamiji was saying may have been specific to those with him at the time.