Swami Shivapadananda on Personal Development
SWAMI SHIVAPADANANDA
DAILY READINGS
From Mother Radha's recordings of Swamiji
Day 518
Balaram Bose's house. The original small Car pulled by Sri Ramakrishna around
this verandah during the Jagannath Festival can be seen in the corner.]
Swamiji reads from: The Teachings of Swami Vivekananda
Every man is a slave except the yogi.
Swamiji: He is talking about the yogis who are God-realised.
Reads: Every man is a slave. He is a slave to food, air, his wife, his children, a dollar, a nation, name and fame, and to a thousand things in the world. The man who is not controlled by any one of these bondages, he alone is a real man, a real yogi.
Swamiji: That is why the yogi ultimately has to live on prana. Where is the prana? It is inside him, it is not outside, and therefore he stops breathing.
Reads: Everyone has an opportunity within the limits of his present development to make himself better. We cannot unmake ourselves. We cannot destroy or impair the vital force within us but we have the freedom to give it different directions.
Swamiji: Instead of thinking I am the body you can now start thinking: I am Brahman [the One indivisible Consciousness]. You cannot do anything else, you already have the body. Just start thinking the other way.
Reads: Men should be taught to be practical and physically strong.
Swamiji: You may tell a man to fast for forty days, but then you may have to carry a corpse at the end of it. Mankind should be practical. Let him begin by fasting for one day – on ekadasi for instance. At first let him fast for one day and then let him increase it to two days. He must become strong physically.
Reads: A dozen of such lions will conquer the world and millions of sheep cannot do so. Secondly, men should not be taught to imitate a personality, however great.
Swamiji: Do not try to do exactly what Sri Ramakrishna did. Rather follow his exercises and let the power, already in you, manifest itself. When you plant the seed of an apple, when it grows it manifests its own nature – it does not turn into something else. This world is the ground in which we must plant ourselves, but we must grow in our own uniqueness. Ultimately we are all Brahman, but all cannot go in a straight line.
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