Daily Reading 39. Swamiji tells where to focus in meditation and the importance of Prana.

Swamiji: Meditate in the heart or head. This is always safe and suits all – never below the heart.
I found the greatest obstacle was the doubts that arise. You must be firmly established in ethical culture.

Reading from Meditation and Spiritual Life by Swami Yatiswarananda: Highly emotional people concentrate in the heart. The heart is the gateway to the Supreme Consciousness. Forget the body. Remember the blissful form of the Ideal. As concentration deepens the body disappears. Each chakra [spiritual centre] is the meeting point of the physical, mental and spiritual bodies of man…

Swamiji: This is very, very important.

Reading: The upper chakras, through eyes, brow and head are not physical. They are gateways to different planes of spiritual consciousness.

Swamiji: When someone asks me, ‘Why did God make all this confusion in us?’ I cannot answer them. But I can tell you how to go upward. And when you are up there, you will see how you went down.

Reading: The importance of the heart centre is that it is where you first feel the Supreme Spirit, the Soul of our soul, paramatman. This is a special seat of the personal God. It is there in the heart that His special power is manifest. The spiritual experiences begin in the heart centre. The devotee is blessed
with visions of God. And visions bring the conviction that the soul is separate from the body. When you enter the heart, body consciousness is forgotten. Then you develop the subtle senses. You must have purity, chastity and intense spiritual hunger.

Swamiji: You must increase the yearning in your heart to know God. Sri Ramakrishna says we must become restless to know God. He was so restless that he took the sword in the temple and was ready to slash his own throat.

Reading: There is the limited and the unlimited, but they are not separate. Feel the Atman, seek it, experience it. Contact the individual and the Universal Centre for divine consciousness within you – and outside you. It is an infinitude of consciousness; the light of intelligence. Each body is the temple of Brahman.

Swamiji: Remember this. In the beginning it is all just imagination. When I say, ‘See the Deity,’ or ‘See the Lord standing on a lotus,’ you imagine it first. Later when the light of intelligence takes over, then it is not vain imagination, it is real.

[Swamiji told us time and agin that ‘Imagination is the greatest gift.’ Not a great gift, but the greatest. He also repeatedly said, ‘What starts out as imagination, becomes reality.’]

Reading: Find rest in the mantra  – not in sleep. If you are tired, prostrate and say, O Lord, Thou art energy, fill me with energy; Thou art strength, fill me with strength. This calms the mind. Seek solitude within you. Real silence is silence of the mind. Real solitude makes you forget the world. Meditate and erase all thought of the world. Think of the Lord alone.

Swamiji: Some people are afraid to display a picture of Master [Sri Ramakrishna] because people will ask questions. Master is not a rogue. He has chosen one or two, not many.

Prana is everything. If someone tells something harsh, it is like murdering somebody. If you get a hiding [beating], the [physical] pain goes away in time – but not so with harsh words. Gurudev [Swami Nischalananda Puri – Swamiji’s beloved Guru and our Paramguru] would speak sweetly. You must have a sattvic [gentle, balanced] quality in the voice.

When prana [the universal life force] is there, more people respect it. Before worshipping the murti we put prana into it [prana pratishtha], and then worship it. Otherwise when offering food you are making a dead body [inanimate statue] eat. You must give your own life, your breath, to the murti. Otherwise no one will worship it. When giving a speech in the shrine you’ll only speak surpassingly [well] when you recognise the prana.

If you tell a lie, you increase the lies in you. You must speak the truth.

Underlined words are hypertext links to clarification, explanation or other sources. Just tap on them.

The free-to-read or download, 396-page Flipbook version of Swamiji’s biography, ‘A Life Lived For Others‘, is available by clicking HERE. If you’d prefer the PDF version, please click HERE.

For our gurubhai Atmaprakash Kramer’s beautiful pictorial ‘memoir’ booklet of the Ramakrishna Centre of South Africa, Avoca Ashram, please click HERE.

There’s also a Facebook site for Swamiji’s posts now. They feature newer readings published more recently. Click HERE to view.

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 those with him at the time.