Disc 133 – track 6. Swamiji says don’t present the spiritual path to others as something ‘mystical’.
To listen to Swamiji speaking, please open the post and then click HERE.
Swamiji says it appears we’ve become stuck in concepts. That we have somehow missed the point. He says: Concepts are good, the scriptures say – but know that every concept to be only a symbol of the infinite. The idea is to transcend [rise above] – not the world – but the five senses. [In this series of audio recordings, Swamiji has said time and again that ‘renouncing’ the world doesn’t mean we must all become monks or nuns, but that we must renounce the dominance and power over us, of the five senses – and transcend them.] And puja [ritual worship], meditation and spiritual exercises [sadhana] are aides to that process. Swamiji breaks down the meaning of Satchidananda – Sat-chid-ananda into its key components.
He explains how to make spiritual life appealing to the non-spiritual person, by ‘packaging’ it in terms which make sense for that person. Specifically as being of benefit in broadening their knowledge base [very appealing to the modern secular mind]. Present it as a path on which they will gain knowledge but feel that they can still enjoy themselves. Don’t make it mystical, says Swamiji. Stressing again the necessity of what Sri Ramakrishna so often said: ‘Take a man from where he is.’
Swamiji says the fault is ours, because we present religion as something separate and distinctive from everything else. And then the ‘ordinary’ [not yet consciously on a spiritual path] man fears it. Everyone fears the unknown. Or is at least uncertain about the unknown. Swamiji quotes his beloved Guru, Swami Nischalananda as saying, ‘Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t.’
The person’s mindset might be that they’re perfectly happy with their life as it is, so why bother with something else? Swamiji says the key is that we are not really looking for religion. We are already religious. That way of life is given to us from the day we are born. Otherwise you may as well be born as a plant and have that way of life. Man’s way of life is given because we are born human, so that is religion itself. [The Vivekachudamani describes this privilege of human birth]. Therefore make the ‘spiritual path’ ordinary and common – normalise it for others. And it’s left to you how you tell another person how to live life so that he’ll gain more knowledge.
The free-to-read or download, 396 page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.
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 an individual or a group of people with him, at the time.