Daily Reading 35. Swamiji speaks on mind management.

Taken from Mother Radha’s notes, written at Swamiji’s feet.

Nothing is new. Everything is old. Someone said to Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, ‘I cannot always say my [prayer] beads.’ Mother said, ‘It is enough if you remember Master [Sri Ramakrishna] always, and salute him mentally. For instance, think Master is giving you the food, then you eat it. Master will look after you here and hereafter. Don’t worry.’

Another devotee asked Holy Mother: ‘With the birth of Master, did the Satya Yuga [Age of Truth or ‘golden’ age] begin?’ She replied, ‘Yes, that is so.’

[Swamiji was at pains to explain that Swami Vivekananda himself confirmed that the advent of Sri Ramakrishna signalled the beginning of the transition to the Satya Yuga. The yugas (ages, eras, epochs) gradually transition or morph from one into another. It’s not a big bang switch from one to the other.]

Sri Ramakrishna said: Pure mind is Brahman. The mind is all-pervasive and is pervaded by Brahman. With what do you think? With the mind, the Self. You may think: ‘I want a Mercedes Benz [car]. But you must earn the money by righteous means and then buy it. This is a practical thing, not a theoretical thing.

Meditate on the mind, think about the mind. If you do this, your thoughts gather together, they do not go anywhere else. They go as if, within, when you meditate on the mind. First you start meditating with Sri Ramakrishna’s murti [image/statue/picture]. Then you give it different organs and senses [bring it to life]. Now, for speech, you have come to the mind. Speech is contained in the mind.

Meditate on the mind. The mind is Brahman [the One undifferentiated, absolute] because God, Brahman, pervades everything. Take charcoal, it is pervaded by fire. Similarly the mind, which is subtle, is permeated by Brahman.

Reading from Meditation and Spiritual Life, by Swami Yatiswarananda: . . . therefore meditate on
the Self. Mind is the Self, is Atman. Mind is the world. In Raja Yoga it says the world is within the mind.

Swamiji: In a dream you see that Swamiji comes to your house, you see the the moon and the stars when he opens the door. Like this, the world is in the mind, in dream form. Because you are dreaming, you think the world is outside. But it is in the mind. So the world is the mind.

Reading: That which permeates the mind is the Atman [soul]. Meditate on the mind as Atman. And slowly, from the mind you will gravitate towards Brahman.

Swamiji: You meditate on Vishnu in the murti [picture, sculpture or representation] and you meditate on the mind as Brahman. Sri Ramakrishna said: ‘Meditate on God with form. Having done that, meditate on the same Deity as formless.’ If the form is the be-all and end-all [only method], Master would have asked us to stop there.

We must make this point clear in the mind. I want to stamp [impress] it in your mind. [Think] ‘I do not want to take birth again, so I will not have death again. I want to go beyond heaven.’

Krishna said, ‘O Arjuna, many times before, you and I were together. The only difference is I know – and therefore do not take birth again.’ If you do not know, you are ignorant, and you take birth. [Bhagavad Gita Chapter 4, Verse 5].

The Upanishads take you to Brahman. They take you beyond duality. That is proper religion. But it is a graded [graduated] course. We are all at different stages – and therefore there are no heathens. Because every ‘heathen’ is at a stage. Do not blame anybody.

First we have to say that there is no God, to know that there is God. If I say, ‘I wish to go to heaven,’ I have put it in speech form. A mantra is put in words. I utter a mantra and the result is I go to heaven. That is a short cut. You utter a mantra and it reveals rites and how to do the rites – i.e. brahmanas.

The Supreme Spirit is behind every mantra we say, and thus our desire is fulfilled. But in reality God is sitting in our hearts. By repetition of the mantra, thought, word and deed are all brought together – they become one. Mostly in our lives, thought word and deed are not one.

Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi said: ‘When word and thought become one, there is prayer, and there will be fulfilment.’ Swamiji: We think of something, but before the thought can go there, our minds have gone somewhere else. The mind must be determined until the thought reaches the target. But we are so fast [in a hurry] that we do not give the mind a chance to accomplish its desired work. Force yourself to do dharma, regardless of what the mind says. Otherwise you are weak; and weak people cannot realise God; they cannot read and understand the scriptures.

Swami Vivekananda said, ‘You must be fearless to get God; and only a man who is truthful can be fearless.’ Only a man who is truthful will give up his life – but will not give up truth. Stick to your principle. A brahmachari that gives up his brahmachari-hood, his dharma, is weak. And Swami Vivekananda says that weakness is a sin, strength a merit.

The Bhagavad Gita states: Our nature makes us act. Anger and desire are rajasic [driven by passion, excessive activity]. This is the enemy. It is insatiable. It is the cause of all sin. Swami Vivekananda said: ‘The senses are all delusion. Go forward, caring not for the good or the evil.’

Tamas [sloth] makes us destructive and a brute. Rajas binds us to action, to humanity. Sattva [balance] leads to divinity, to freedom. How to become sattvic? Swami Vivekananda says: ‘You must reach that state where your very breathing is God.’

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.