Swami Shivapadananda on meditation focus
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji
558
[Pictured: Shrine to the Holy Mother, Sri Sarada Devi, in her 1st floor room at the Udbodhan House in Kolkata, where Mother lived following the mahasamadhi of Sri Ramakrishna.]
If you touch Hanumanji, you will be a Ram bhakta [devotee].
Just go and do your sadhana [spiritual practice, meditation, japa]. Even without devotion, just keep repeating his name. The name itself will give you devotion. That is my experience of the name of God. So long as you keep recalling Him again and again, He will clear the path Himself.
Anahata [sound of the heart Chakra] is the same as AUM. The sound that the yogis hear in the heart is AUM.
You must concentrate on your Ishta Devata for two years; after that you will be established. Otherwise you will change from this to that
Devotee: What is the difference between repeating one, one, one, and Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna, Ramakrishna?
Swamiji: When we say 'Ramakrishna' we have a concept, a mental picture of Sri Ramakrishna. If you count one and see one, the concentrated mind will become quite calm. But we want to think of Sri Ramakrishna and to become Sri Ramakrishna. Just watch your thoughts. You are not the thoughts, you are separate from the thoughts. When you know you are not watching any more, then you know you are It [subject and object are one].
Sri Ramakrishna said, 'Weep, pray secretly in solitude. Thinking on me alone will do. Verily, verily I say unto you, whosoever thinks of me alone, inherits my wealth as a son inherits his father's wealth – but not in a Vedantic sense. Meditate, O my mind, on the Lord, who is Consciousness, rarefied and spotlessly pure.'
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words in these postings, in context. Every teaching or instruction that he gave
was specific to the people who were with Swamiji at the time.
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