Disc 138 Track 2. Swamiji says stop worrying about other people’s behaviour. Focus on your relationship with God.

To listen to Swamiji speaking, please fully open the post and then click HERE.

Swamiji starts off speaking with an analogy about rain. And how it rains selflessly. It falls on rock, it falls on virgin ground, and it also falls where there are plants. But it doesn’t care if anything is growing or not. 

You must go on doing good [dharma] but don’t care what they [others] do. You want to force the donkey to drink water. You’ll lose all your power and you yourself will need strength. You must not worry about those who are drinking or not. You just say what must be said and those people who are ready, they will take it and those who are not ready, they will not take it.

If you start getting worried, that means egoistic things you are doing. Because [you’re thinking] ‘I am the teacher and I’m telling the right thing and these people are not listening. What should I do?’ You just say the right thing. There are very few people in this ashram that I have forced to do certain things, otherwise I don’t. That’s why the people can’t understand me. 

Yesterday a man said to me, ‘Oh, Shivapadananda, people do bad too, and they come here and he [you] accepts them.’ This man was saying, “X Swami was saying, ‘Oh bad things they do, but he accepts them.’” I said: But I can’t see anything bad. The man did bad. He came to prostrate to me; must I tell him to get out? The only thing is when the people are seated, I’ll tell everyone, ‘Don’t do bad.’ Why should I point it directly to that man and say, ‘You don’t do that.’ What for? I have no business to do that. I’ll say generally, ‘Don’t do bad, these things if you do them, are not good.’ And if you’re going to continue doing them, what can I do about it? You understand what I’m saying? 

I’m not getting worried if the man is not listening. If it’s his nature to eat grass, he must eat grass. What can I do? If it’s your nature to eat chillies, you eat chillies. Your mouth will burn, your stomach will burn and next morning something else will burn. It’s your own business. But I’m telling you don’t eat chillies, because it’s going to give you trouble. You understand? You must watch this thing – in the guise of ‘doing good’ the ego is a funny thing, my son. I mean son, what I am saying.

Switching gears [it’s a different audio clip], Swamiji is talking about relationships with God. You’ll be a servant and you’ll say God is your master. Sometimes you’ll say, no I want to feel that I have more brotherly love in me, so I think God will be my brother, like Bharata and Rama. Sometimes you’ll say I want to be the servant of God, and He becomes your master. You become Hanuman [to Lord Rama]. Sometimes you’ll say, ‘I am the father’ and baby Krishna is my baby. So you have to take your natural, human relationship and have it with God. Slowly that will mature into a divine relationship.

Swamiji goes on to stress the need for the relationship that we develop with God to be natural – not to imitate anyone else’s approach. Natural is guileless says Swamiji. Anything which is not natural is not guileless. Remember that. 

Sometimes I say that I’m not going to joke that Hanumanji is my big brother, no, no, no. You see my mind is still divine – it’s thinking about Hanumanji. It’s not thinking about anything bad. Then suddenly I say, Oh Ganapati [Lord Ganesha] my laaitjie [friend/peer] let’s go play a little bit. So I think of all sorts of things to keep the mind divine all the time. I’m not telling anything bad. 

Sometimes I tell Mother Kali, I say, ‘Ma, you’re my mother, Ma.’ Sometimes I even go to the extent, I say, ‘No, you’re my wife – I’m Shiva [Her divine consort].’ Devotees chuckle. I just keep myself divine, that’s all I do. I don’t go down. 

‘Wife’ in that way doesn’t mean wife in an ordinary sense. She’s my Shakti [power], without her strength what can I do? Nothing. I’m a living corpse. ‘I am Shiva.’ Anything that helps my mind feel divine I’ll carry on saying. Understand what I mean about ‘the wife’? Ordinary mundane wife? No, I’m not saying anything wrong. She’s the Shakti and I’m only the Purusha. Without her I’m a living corpse.

You see, you marry two ideas. Take two ideas: you don’t get married in the usual sense. So like that, that’s why Shakti and Purusha are ‘married’ [joined together, inseparable] in that way.

I have lots of jokes. In the morning I go and tell Ramakrishna ‘Om Namo Narayana’, with the suprabhatam – sometimes I call him bhaiya [elder brother in Hindi]. Sometimes I’ll say, ‘No you’re not my bhaiya today. Today you are my guru.’ The next day I’ll say, ‘Today you are my Prabhu.’ Every time I tell him something, it keeps my mind divine, it doesn’t bring it down. The idea is to keep your mind high all the time.

[Swami] Vivekananda used to mimic Ramakrishna getting into samadhi [superconsciousness]. All his gurubhais [brother disciples] would dance around him and say, ‘Oh, now Thakurji [Master] has arrived, then they’d laugh and sit down. The idea was to keep the mind all the time on Sri Ramakrishna. Not mocking Him. That’s a different story.

Another clip on this track has Swamiji speaking about japa [the repetition of a mantra, sacred word, sound syllable or one of the many names attributed to God]. Do japa. Don’t get mixed up with anything. Just go and do only japa. What? Only japa! Keep repeating during the day, sitting, standing, just repeat God’s name lovingly. And know that God is all-loving, all-merciful, all-powerful. Don’t get yourself mixed up with some technical, ‘specialised’ way of realising God.

Hanumanji, the greatest bhakta of all the bhaktas, realised God by repeating only God’s name. And who else can have a restless mind like Hanumanji? [Lord Hanuman had taken the physical form of a monkey, or as Swami Nishreyasananda, direct disciple of Swami Shivananda Mahapurush of the Ramakrishna Mission] told us, an aboriginal man]. A restless mind like his, became one-pointed [concentrated] by repeating Sri Rama’s name. We are not that restless like a monkey. Our minds can quickly become more concentrated. You get what I am saying? If you do japa, pranayama [ breath control] will come automatically. 

Hanuman found Sita for Rama. [Swami] Vivekananda spread the name of [Sri] Ramakrishna, and he ‘jumped over’ the ocean, and found us for Sri Ramakrishna. We are like the [Mother] Sitas. Both are message bearers. In the Krishna avatar [incarnation], Vivekananda can be compared to Arjuna asking and putting questions to God. Digging out answers. Similarly, Vivekananda quoted Ramakrishna, and that gives answers for us today. That’s why his book [Master’s gospel] is known as ‘gospel’. Just like the Bhagavad Gita is the [Sanatana Dharma/Hinduism] Gospel [‘gospel’ means ‘good news’]. That is how Vivekananda is the Seer, the Rishi. Hanumanji is the Seer and Rishi, and so is Arjuna the Seer and Rishi.

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.