Disc 138 Track 4. Swamiji explores the overcoming of fear.

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

[The first 15 seconds on the clip aren’t audible.] Then someone asks [an indistinct] question which is fear-related. Swamiji asks him whether the fear is connected to the idea of getting married. Although we don’t hear the answer, Swamiji explains that he notices a great deal of fear in both young men and women before finally ‘tying the knot’. In essence it’s ‘a fear of the unknown’ says Swamiji.

Swamiji says: ‘Don’t fear – pray. By loving God more and more, you’ll overcome that fear.’ [A wonderful illustration of the concept of ‘sublimation’ in which we don’t try to suppress or crush one thing, but emphasise or grow another positive emotion to outweigh it, and in time replace it].

Don’t run away from God and don’t run away from fear. But think about and love God more, to overcome fear, says Swamiji. That fear is such a natural thing. Increase the love for God and the fear vanishes. Fear is a tester – it comes to tempt you, to see which way you fall. This way or that way. 

Swamiji quotes the Saints and Sages using descriptions for God and ends on, ‘God is fearless.’ Says Swamiji, why should I not go to the Fearless One? I must go. But fear is trying to pull me back. It is afraid to die. Decrease it slowly. Don’t rush it.

Swamiji says, after asking the person’s age, ‘It took you about twelve years to get to this stage where you love God, you’re attracted towards God, and yet here’s fear. Who cares? Take the next several years to increase that. Don’t rush it. I always say, ‘God, I don’t care what I do, as long as I do it with you.’

Swamiji on sleep: Lazy [tamasic] people get up after six am. Says Swamiji, I’m not talking about those people who work night shift. I expect a man – a real man – to sleep for five or six hours. A lazy man sleeps for eight hours. And hopeless people sleep for more than that.

The idea is that when you sleep, you are stagnant. You are neither doing sin nor doing good. So you are ‘hopelessly hopeless’. You’re going neither to hell nor to heaven. You are stagnant. Because you are stagnant you are sinning. Because God in the Bhagavad Gita says that though He’s got nothing to do, He’s ever active and He never sleeps. You want to waste the life that God gave you? You’re supposed to accomplish, through work, the highest good. But instead of accomplishing the highest good, you’re sleeping. You’re stagnating. And stagnation is the greatest, greatest, greatest sin.

Supposing you know that every hour you work, you will make a million [South Africa currency] Rand. Tell me… [before Swamiji could complete the sentence, someone shouted out, ‘No sleep!’ Devotees erupt in merriment.] Says Swamiji, ‘That’s the answer I wanted!’  

Swamiji re-tells a story about a thief [Click HERE to read it], told by Sri Ramakrishna.  Says Swamiji, ‘What do you think the thief will do? He’ll poke his finger through the paper wall and go through to the other side!’ That’s what Sri Ramakrishna says. Swamiji says: You see, the young man asked about faith. Truly, we have our faith in the wrong place.

This is the only difference. If we had faith in the scriptures and the words of the holy people, we wouldn’t be in the plight we’re in. We have no faith in the holy people. No faith. If we did, What Vasishtha said, what Ram said, what Krishna said, what Arjuna said, what Vivekananda said, we’d jump at it. All this time we’re trying to build some sort of faith, because we’ve got our faith in something else. We’re afraid to give it up because we don’t know if the other one [the alternative] is right.

Swamiji wraps up the discussion by giving examples of where our misplaced faith lies. Says Swamiji, take your faith out of those things and put it there – in God. And Swamiji illustrates this with an example of what we do when we’re unwell. Our first thought is the doctor, instead of including God in the process.

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.